Calabria, 1994

What was the difference between the touch you gave me 

and the touch you painted?

Did it not hit the same note,

the same nerve

that morning when we woke up 

you coughed jumped out of bed

clothes thrown on.

You were a coat hanger with a dress dangled off of it.

Weeks later the painting, on the postcard you sent,

is it still a painting if 

ink and pencil

charcoal and fiber 

take me back to that morning in bed,

with you murmuring mistake

all the way down the stairs.