Soirée
Your humor is deft and cutting
my fingers off one by one,
she said as we left the party.
I started up the car and said:
Every joke holds one blade inside
the breast pocket of its coat
to open things and liberate
the world of unremembered light.
This exchange took place without words.
A snowbank leapt into the headlights.
The car seemed to know the way home.
Until that moment I had been waiting
to put my mouth over her mouth
and breathe the ferment of the evening.
This might have led to touching
the soft parts of our bodies together.
Instead we fell asleep, tongues
heavy in our mouths like fish.
—Michael Bazzett
—found in You Must Remember This (2014)