At the livery we never met horses
                                             and implication forced our polite registers down

We expected flesh would make us learn
                                             inferred particples as statements

minus nudity
minus poverty
minus statement

Katy on the couch last night calling me out on Breton
We don’t talk about these things                  It’s cereal milk and Adele’s attitude
                                                                                    Or I stare at the wall and think

                                             horse particles
or I start to think
horseshit
or Katy says it
only Katy never says
horseshit
she looks at me with her eyes
and I think I am saying horseshit

We never went to the livery, did we?
But the implications of the horses in absence and the expected flesh

though Katy would argue out the particle talk
and I would argue out the small talk

The night she said let’s watch Persona
and we got through the opening sequence before our daughter woke up

We agree every morning on coffee
we eat the same meals
share a toilet
Our daughter dances through an infinite playground
We speak in games and music returns and repeats
                                    a construction continual
                                    variations of happy sounded out in time
                                    animals animals and sleep

We do this thing when one of us plays Nina Simone
We both listen and sooner or later we start talking about her

I beg Katy to read Clarice Lispector I do not know how to tell her about Celan
I can’t imagine what raptures her mind is sitting on

Silence on a gun
versus
Silence on an afternoon

Or
our silence asleep a perfect film we never see and the tension of the split dream
the defined horses of our opposing imaginations merge in one version of absence