Two Caterpillars

He loves those first hours after she comes back. 
They don’t touch right away. They walk around the house 
together as if it’s not their house and slip back 
into a conversation they’ve been having over the phone that morning.

He can smell the way her hair carries the weeks 
she’s been gone and the country she’s been in—it reminds 
him of the smell of a dog’s paw.

When he was a child, the smell of a dusty alley stayed with him 
for weeks, just under his chin, after visiting the village 
his father grew up in.

He can’t remember if he has ever told her this before. 
But they talk of other things. Then they touch. And the smell 
she carried into the house goes away, as if it was the touching 
that did it, and she lies in bed, facing the ceiling, shuts 
her eyes and says, I know this sounds like the start of a joke

but just listen. I walked on this road for a long time. I saw two 
caterpillars, one on each side of the road—I saw them uncurl 
themselves and begin to head toward each other. It happened faster 
than I thought they could go. And they met 
in the middle; and they stopped. They stopped with all that space 
around them, everywhere, and the rushing, incoming sound.