Afraid of the Sun*

by James Hannon

I brought you red carnations
and white German wine,
and in the cool shadows of your room
you brought me to my senses.
Your voice slipped into my blood.
In an hour, it’s true,
we lived forever.

Out in the summer sun
our love seemed to wither.
Glare stabbed our eyes.
Heat baked our skin.
The sidewalks were burning coals,
like the eyes we passed on the street.
We were drenched in sex
and they sniffed us like angry dogs.
We shaded our eyes
and scanned the scorching street
for a wife, a husband,
for dangerous friends.
We longed for a cloak of darkness.

You had survived this passion
more than once
and shared with me the arcana,
how to drink the night like wine
and sleepwalk through every day--
'til the night when the pain
breached the walls of my heart
and I learned where those stories began.


* from Willard and Maple XI (2006)