Half-Light

Your laughter was like
the early morning rain.
It washed over the pastures
of my sleepy skin. Pitter. Patter.
Brushing away the golden beads of sweat
that your lips had once planted there.
Dawn erupted in a sculpted silver sky
and in the meadow of white linen sheets
we lay entwined.

My eager ears to your heaving chest
to listen to your heart beat. Pitter. Patter.
Like the rain
that woke me from my slumber.
The hour shone blood red
from the clock radio.

I turned to an empty meadow.
The sheets were cold and creased.
Gone.
But not without a trace.
I could feel your fingertips
on the linen, as I still felt them
on my flesh.

And I wept with the morning.

A thousand hours of daylight
between now and then.
But still in the half-light
between awake
and asleep
I wander home in the rain.
And taste your essence,
your ecstacy,
rising from the grates by the
roadside.