The questions are in the picture and the poem is down below! Then, Gone
By Jessica Argyle - 2011

The rains came again today and at first I watched the earth resist and water gather
like beads of mercury on the hardpan. Great pools formed over crusts of soil,
parched until it finally gave way. Now, saturated, the slightest pressure from a toe
will make it weep.
Our feet touch, clammy damp and we hold hands softly, breath thick in thick air. I
see myself in a leaf, mascara pooled under my eyes and feel like a traveler in
some jungle. And when I see your shining eyes afraid to look I know that you are
with me, moving through the tangle.
All the month long I prepare, the sensual tradeoffs the ritual of readiness,
stretching straining every sinew. And sometimes when I eat I can trace a crust of
bread as it travels through my body. I hear every nuance, taste salt before it is
there.
I am old now and you are older but when I move my fingers over the years it is
wrong to call me tender, sentimental. Like a deck of cards, a cartoonists trick, I
flip them to create a picture of you moving backward in time and I watch the
years fall away, the eyes harden mouth set downward in a permanent no.
No, I prefer the years the softness that time pushes open turns inside out helpless
as a mollusk exposed on the beach.
I am finally happy that I have been shown for the fraud that I am living on
the outside of town on highway cars pushing their way through my living room.