after Francis Bacon

The before was a great abeyance
of anything. It had no face
to cluster open, no pomegranate
clutches of muscle to thud hard
against the hallway’s serene
linoleum sea. It was a fantasy
we managed, the impossible silence
of our complete life, but after
fantasy appears the restless
digression of fact: his cheek,
peonied. The fat spume settled,
like dew, against the wall. The jelly
of his bright, violet eyes.
His body what it always was,
a simple fact of spring.