Even the dead weep for our isolation;
in the pit of night, I dream of you at my
side, bleary-eyed, maskless. We stare
out the same window at the same desolation.

It is that hour when the fog is so thick
we turn inward and see things as they are.
I feel for where we last touched, before this
madness: it is what the rain does not wash away

that sustains. The floodwaters will recede;
we have time yet for proper funerals.
Soon enough we will flourish again like lilies
in a patch of earth we’ve made beautiful together.

Until then, I bite my lip hard. Does this pass
for a kiss in quarantine? If to my arid tongue
the blood tastes of honey, how much sweeter,
then, the thought of your lips on mine!