We were making love and it was a solid thing,
a garden made of breath, a city of caresses.
We were making love, even though
it would disappear each time we made it 
and have to be made over and over again,
the way God, abiding, renews the world,
every ragged leaf and blade of it.
I admit I was making you, a man,
from dreams and spittle,
from the nothingness we both sprang out of.
I could visualize you tucked
and ready to slide down the chute
of your mother
into this world of pain and plum trees,
waterfalls and volcanoes.
I had been waiting years for you, even in the rain.
We were making love,
melting ourselves down in that crucible,
smooth, soaked, flushed, sparkling.
Already I’d forgotten what year it was.
Already I’d forgotten all the lovers who’d failed me,
all those whom I had failed.
You don’t have to tell me now
how the floodwaters were already rising,
the house slipping
from its shaky foundation,
off-course meteors aiming
directly at the cleft in the valley of the heart.
How when I said I was willing
to throw everything into that fire,
the fire heard me and laughed.

— Previously published in The Sun (August 2007, Issue 380); reprinted by author’s permission

Bio: Alison Luterman