Borderline

I dreamed once that I saw your face in
my mirror, rippling prolifically like
water on glass on my face,
and then I was drowning, and I
fell,
   fell,
      fell  
too fast into your watery eyes.

                   Without imagination, prosaically as you
                   could, you told me you
                   loved me and hoped we'd meet again
                   soon. I smiled, proprietarily, and
                   wiped the steam off of your face as
                   I left you on probation and closed the door behind me.

You came to me then, in the mists, clinging
to me under my jacket and in my hair and my eyes and my mouth until
I was suffocating and choking
under the weight of the water and the
proximity of your hands. I screamed until the mists
filled my lungs and I couldn't breathe, all I could do was
fall,
  fall,
     fall

                  into your bleary eyes and through them
                  into the sea off of the promontory that I
                  thought that I loved. I
                  fell,
                    fell,
                      fell
and screamed with the mist and my protracted cry
became the hissing
of a teakettle that sat too long on the stove.

You joined me then for dinner, sitting
gently in my cup. And you
fell,
  fell,
    fell
                  with every drop into my bloodstream like a drug
                  that I couldn't quite give up.  You dripped
                  through my brain and whispered
                  me secrets, how you could only
                  fall,
                    fall,
                      fall,
into me, my lungs, my mind.
With hands like rocks and
lips like steam you had found me
on the edge of the darkest river
curled against moss and whispering winds.
I hissed like the mists, too soft and slow,
and you told me we could walk on water
if I could learn not to fall.