after Study for Nude, Francis Bacon, 1951

I age out           of obsession / its echo a pattern

  you yawn into           each new room / such ease

in folding me / these contortions ache

pleated into night another day / you falsify

time / a ceiling I curve to another weight

you fashion affection a grift / gift I reject

your taking / hackled           haunt I stumble out as

  leaving your touch / behind           every curtain

I must have been the shape           I desired / to be

what you make me           unknots from night

  like neon / I must be           ever recognizable

behind the lids / I must not be           here

another vestige curls           from me / unfurls

  to nothing / all you spare me           is an opening

another           absence from which I emerge