It continues with decorated cups holding tea that smokes like the cigarette we shared, the cold rain on the summer afternoon driveway outside the window, our still unmade bed that seemed so big and so small. We drove the curving county two-lane, temporary fog and ancient trees our witnesses, especially to rumple those sheets and let the duvet slid to the worn wood boards. Now we act civilly, observe confused rituals with your mother’s fine china and bagged tea from the highway convenience store, triangles of toast holding generic jam from a garishly labeled plastic jar. The table cloth is hand-embroidered heirloom cotton, a great-grandmother’s months of work. Your blouse is roughly tossed across the top of an empty chair’s ladderback. We’ve walked your father’s woods on winter days, the bare black bark rising like bars containing us as though our hearts were on exhibit, but today we will take our cups and return to bed, you propped against the headboard in gray camisole and other nakedness, I lying reversed next to you, one hand kneading your left leg while needing you, both speaking of affairs far smaller than our time together. Tomorrow we will travel south through yesterday’s woods, pause to share the shore of the once and future ocean. It will be raining when we reach the city. Strangers with eyes downcast beneath umbrellas will pass each other in barred crosswalks.