After four months, the fever withdrew into her,
past the vanishing point, and now it was impossible
to remember how fully it had filled her,
like light soaking the tissue of a leaf. Outside,
the traffic thinned to a word—so we split a cigarette
on the porch with the speaker in the window
and listened to Robert Johnson press his voice
against the City (—a crystal quivering in the microphone).
The heavy book in my hands never opened—
it was there only to keep me still.
When the last song ended, the notes dropped
from their thumbtacks back into the soil,
and then the sky had grown noticeably darker—
it wasn’t late; it was simply going to rain.
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