Everything feels like a sign these days:
The dead birds I keep passing on the sidewalk,
The dog that bit me on my walk home
From my last day of college,
The poet old enough to be my grandfather
Who reads a poem about kissing his aging
Wife in their garden, calling himself Adam, her Eve.
I have the distinct feeling that I’m careening
Toward disaster. Politicians have been squawking
About the end of days on the television,
And I listen obsessively to songs
About the end of the world, of lovers clinging
To each other as they topple into the pit together.
I had been convinced that I was going to die
Alone, ready to greet the Rapture on my own solitary feet,
But I look at you sleeping next to me and wonder
How you’ll look when you’re old.
Will you look like your father, who looks like a ship’s
Captain from a 70s sitcom?
It’s hard to imagine, with your cherubim’s face,
Your hands that would look beautiful
Clasped around the hilt of a blazing sword,
Driving me from my home.
Where will you be when our souls
Leave our bodies? Will you still be sneaking
Into my room after our friends are asleep,
Counting which hours we can feasibly steal?
How many seals will have to be broken
For me to be able to keep you here in my scrawny
Sinner’s arms? Give me my sin
Again and I’ll keep it, gladly, until the final trumpet
Knocks me out of bed.