Paper Chains

The first snow of the year & you lying between my breasts in my husband's house & the snow gently rising in my throat like guilt, & the windows frosted over as if etched by acid. You have come from the desert & have left a little sand between my legs where it rubs & rubs & secretes a milky fluid, finally a poem or a pearl. I am your oyster shell, your mother of pearl gleaming like oil on water for two hours on a snowy day. 'Poets fall in love to write about it!' I said in my brittle way, & told you about other loves to tempt you & heard your siren songs of old affairs. I fall in love as a kind of research project. You fall in love as some men go to war. What tanks! What bombs! What storms of index cards! I am binding up your legs with carbon ribbon. I tied you to the bed with paper chains.