If I had one love, it was the one who sat

naked all night with me in the shower

after sex when I couldn't sleep, when I

hadn't slept for weeks, and made believe

we were in a rainforest on the other

side of the world and the water that fell

was a storm warmed by the equator,

the beat of the party beyond the wall

the death song of cicadas, therain's

rapid chatter off the giant leaves

our talk, the breathing of the giant trees

our breath;

I crawled under a roof of hawthorn,

woven trunks a chair, window made of rain.

He came and sat with me, weightless yet warm –

a human warmth I hadn't known for years –

all I left behind come to join me here,

the whole my body makes of two halves

when it is alone, when I have walked far

enough into the woods to out-walk my death.

Rain shivered like glass held to the light

and I slipped out of mind or maybe I slept

when what came through me was another's breath.

who walked through me the morning I was halfasleep,

half-awake, awake to another world,

a big dark dog fox blood-dark rising from the path

I'd stepped onto from the woods, trees a-blur

with rain, my material self forming from a slur

of slate grey dawn-light. A paw, claw-tipped,

peeled from my chest and the rest turned

a pirouette as if my skin was mist, as if my flesh

had shifted each atom – iron blooming

in my mouth, a lightning hit, hands tingling;

close-up its eyes were lit windows

where grandmother fox sat at her sewing,