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Romeo & Juliet

By Sherod SantosPosted Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2000, at 8:00 PM ET

"O true apothecary"

With that same unsettling instinct for how human love
can fall by chance to the borrowed grave of a coldwater flat,
the broadcast snows heaped up since dawn against our two small
street-level windows, walling out the staticky, offstage noise
of the early morning traffic, the stink of trash and exhaust pipe fumes.

But when setting aside our breakfast trays, and drawing the goose-
down coverlet off, you climbed up over me, late for work,
and filled my mouth with a nut-brown, poppied aureole,
I couldn't believe that either of us would ever die, or that,
given the choice, we wouldn't choose this and be buried alive.

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Sherod Santos is the author of five books of poetry, most recently The Perishing. In 2005, he published Greek Lyric Poetry: A New Translation.
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