Elizabeth Robinson

Two lovers leap from great height and

what they leap from is Love itself, the shoulder

of a great, hairy monster.  Monster of so great

a height that they must fall infinitely, the rush of

air chapping their genitals, their fingers entwined,

detached, entwined, all in the tension of weight

finding its own force.   Two

lovers do not fall in Love, for to do so would be to be

ingested, annihilated. But they vault from

Love as though the greatest peril is

the only natural escape.  Falling, falling.

Their words indecipherable against the friction

of atmosphere on the speed of their plummeting.

Their lips, had they been able to pause, would be

seen to be scarlet with windburn.  And Love

so stolid, so dumbfounded as they descend

with endless speed from Love’s hirsute perch.

Love, too motionless even to place a palm up and

catch them, the lovers.  Love’s monstrous

stillness.  Two lovers’ hair in air-snarled tendrils

pushed back from their foreheads, their

troth so fleet.  The monster Love an after-

thought to the chaos of their motion.  Love always

misbegotten, vast, and left behind.  Two lovers,

knees and nipples equally pink when so

rubbed by cloud and gale.   Endless and

not.  Finite and boundless, their commitment

to what they’ve left behind. Their vow to the

inevitability of gravity. The mutable silence of

the monster who would fall and fall into their

wake, only, if only Love could.