The bora came in the window without asking
and lifted the red curtain like a skirt,
and I thought: well, if the wind can be that rude,
so can I.
You were on the bed with your book.
You were not reading your book.
I took off the day the way you take off a dress
you wore to someone else's party —
the watch first, the little silver one,
laid on the dresser face down
so it couldn't see.
Then the earrings. Slowly. One, and the other.
Then the pins in my hair, all eleven,
dropping into the dish with a sound like rain starting.
You put the book down.
The light was the last of it, from the sea,
orange going red going the colour of wine at the bottom of a glass,
and I let it have me first:
let it slide off one shoulder with the strap,
let it pour down the long line of my back
the way the old painters let it fall on a saint
they secretly wanted.
I didn't turn round.
I could feel you looking. That was enough.
That was, for a whole minute, everything —
the wind, the curtain, the sea,
your eyes doing the slow work my hands were doing,
my skin going gold, then rose, then dark.
When the light was gone I turned.
And the bora shut the window behind me,
hard,
the way a good friend leaves
when it's time.
