LEVY

Every joy is paid for
with a sorrow. With time
they come to inhabit
the same place, wary at first,
watching each other across
a space now empty of intentions.


They gather to fill the hollow
once embraced between us,
a thinness of shared heat,
a veneer of scent, a film
of sweat, an uncertain boundary
of self in slow dissolution.


Joy exists, and sorrow.
Strange how so alike they become
living in the same room,
how they harden the walls
and press together like lovers
hungry for a mouth, inseparable,
until we can no longer
tell them apart.


© 2006 by Richard W. Todd

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