I watch his face, bright salt eyes

flickering with a past that had poured her name

into a want he didn’t know he carried,

unfolded her like a mystery and memory

of home and everywhere he’d come

to live in her laughter, fevered

sprawl of her dreams.

I watch him, mouth a halo

of unlocked longing, swallow

of joy that rises up and still up,

floats its verse above our heads,

story of then, of now

as she stops before his naked yes

and he takes her hand, takes

the all of her that moves

through breath and bone.

And she presses his palm, braids

a secret bridge from vein to vein,

song of their hidden selves.

We lean in, drunk hearts,

swollen hope with a map

to beginning again.

And her tears fall, pearlescent,

bare because her body

is a sea that holds him,

and happiness can be too much

and once she had mistaken love

for a midnight storm, a fitful thirst

when he, and this,

and in between

their spangled vows

is all

the wakened

world.