a civil union, held in secret, during a lengthy war

There was a strange symmetry when our bodies moved

I'd gone white from some anxious fever

your hair seemed dark as winter

and I smelled Germany on you

a drift of shoe polish from your cowskin boots

I left cloves, sap and splinters trailing around your wrist

your hands were strangers with their new tattoos

but in your arms I was a river 

all cascades and eddies, your shoulders sinking sand

like shoreline roots we grew down and deep together 

and for a moment all was still

Then an undercurrent stronger than flood waters

carried us downstream

to where the channel narrowed

I reared my head and breathed shallow

but you'd turned red like a smooth bed of sand disrupted 

suddenly we were forced to face a blue so big

we tumbled to the ocean ground

and there we stared the ancient mammals down

serpent whales giving birth

owls who could swim and speak in tongues

caiman sharpening their teeth against their mother's jaws

In the morning we awoke

our hands tied permanent in knots

palms simply locked

wide eyes satisfied 

assured that when machine guns

hit our roof it would be like 

rice confetti and hot ash

we'd survive with bruised knees

skin folded in ageing pleats

hair gone clear with time