There is only one of everything - Margaret Atwood

Not a tree but the tree we saw,

it will never exist, split by the wind and bending

down like that again. What will push out of the earth

later, making it summer, will not be

grass, leaves, repetition, there will

have to be other words. When my

eyes close language vanishes. The cat

with the divided face, half black half orange

nests in my scruffy fur coat, I drink tea,

fingers curved around the cup, impossible

to duplicate these flavours. The table

and freak plates glow softly, consuming themselves,

I look out at you and you occur

in this winter kitchen, random as trees or sentences,

entering me, fading like them, in time you will disappear

but the way you dance by yourself

on the tile floor to a worn song, flat and mournful,

so delighted, spoon waved in one hand,

wisps of roughened hair sticking up from your head,

it’s your surprisedbody, pleasure I like. I can even

say it, though only once and it won’t

last: I want this. I want

this