Two Julys

Two summers past I heard you leaving

softly stepping so as not to wake me.

The room was dark and full of you

and dread that clutched at all of me.

Instinct arrived at three a.m.

to the sound of flung locks

click of a clock,  breath exiting

sharply from an empty room.

I curled in the dark, eyes squeezed

shut, a child again at forty-eight.

It was then the door re-opened

you strode back, gathered me up

as if knowing, kissed me long and hard. 

Only then did you go fully, loudly

in defiance of the fact that you had to.

I was left alone swathed in night -

transforming back into woman.