Call it a piano tucked inside a houseboat. The woods that turn usinside out: heart which is not a salt lick. Deer which will no longergraze at our wrists at sundown. Our hands are open because they areempty. We've cuffed ourselves tight at the wrists with what isleft of daylight. We've cuffed ourselves to the snow. The landscape:a hospital. The heartache: a cliché. They say what heals is to sawone's self in half & walk away as miracle. When I found out I washarboring an asterism of hearts, no one starred the sick one's closed.No one kissed us congratulations. Inside you pressed yourselves togetherlike two playing cards, faces in profile. We embroidered your handsas an offering. We measured the distance in pulses. The variable lightof your leftover X-rays still slices us off at the wrist. Your sister developsin the open air as if dipped in chemicals in a dark room. When the house-lights come on like an ambulance's dazzle, we've already left our bodiesto science, we've let the unbearable constellation be halved.