The Burning Room

When the room goes up in smoke we are both taken captive
by your voice strung out wavering
wordlessly in the darkness,
trapped in an unsaid forever.

Don’t we both recognize this place,
as thought it had to have happened to us,
so many times over,
as though it never stops happening?

It’s impossible for this impasse
not to cleave us again, and again,

so long as we are willingly bound,
so long as there can never be a way out
beyond this right-now,
so long as hour after hour stretches its hands out to grasp something we can only know

moving slowly, heavily,
heart to heart in the dim light.