we lie like puddles
beneath the nameless tree,
an owl thirty feet up
sending thoughts of squirrel fur
down to illuminate
your cheekbones. we are not
touching. the moon is as cold
as a clipped, dirty fingernail.
"will it live?" I ask, spreading
the skin of my leafless hands
across the atrophying words.
the owl, startled, convulses from the treetop-
the warm, gray thing in its talons
hears god singing
and twitches.
you catch my voice and blow
its components through the air
like maple seeds.
we watch them spin towards
our cold, cold bodies
with the vigor
of a shakespearean tragedy
(far away, a raptor is wiping
its beak clean of blood
still hungering)