The Fish

I want to say that I've phoned you a dozen times this week and sometimes the dog has answered and sometimes the parrot and once the imperturbable fish in their aquarium revolved through my ear like fossils of your tongue (This is to be recited in those silences which come upon bars when the juke box and the conversations stop at the same time for no apparent reason.) (This is to be recited in the laziness of Sunday afternoons when yawns are buckets filling with sunlight.) (This is to be recited late at night on a streetcorner as the bus retreats into the distance, into the blurred sound of old cities rusting under water.) I have returned to inhabit my body we have inhabited our bodies my feet again touch a real floor as my hand has touched this sheet / your back and because we have so lived in these rooms I keep phoning the dog, the parrot the fish in their aquarium circling like remembrances of tongues (This is to be recited slowly and with care.)