We leave
our boots to lean against the trailhead.
Our coats and gloves, folded neatly,
will line the nests of birds

and the jays will learn her name
before they hatch. Your faithlessness will hymn
the hemlock groves
come springtime. You agree to burn
the map with blue-black fingers. You agree to feed

the matches to the fire. Your knife
is abandoned after we undress
our first rabbit

and learn again why we were given
teeth. We become what your first wife
always said we were: animals
on all fours, forgetting our names.
We become
what I always knew us to be.

I revise my old mistakes and surrender.
There has always been a howl in the dark
well of your throat
— the rush of some black water,
waiting for starvation.