Four lights to the highway.

Three greens and a yellow.

Thirty minutes to cubicles, keyboards.

Ten to dress shirts, smiles.

I didn't plan this,

never.

remember:

you chose a man

who does not understand

rhythm.

I couldn't convince the blind

I could dance. They'd hear my feet drag

like bird's do when they break water, hear you

ow at my missteps, and they wouldn't be wrong to

call me gawky and white.

You're always nice, though.

You use that maternal advice:

"you're getting better each time,"

even though I know,

we know,

I need lessons or wine

to try and match what you do,

how you go about the whole thing

like there is only now. 

You wake up dancing,

and I believe somehow

you were born twirling,

were a music box ballerina

in your mom's underbelly,

waiting to be wound up,

to stretch out your arms

and spin,

knowing the world

would have to forget. 

We fall in

to feelings

even though we grow

up believing they are truly

unique, their own separate souls,

giving us color like warm clothes.

We could leave something we thought

was once universe-issued because

we no longer notice or

care for

the smalls loves

that drew us in:

her snort laugh, how she

picks at her food, how she

always dresses for comfort

could all become

characteristics

we rarely miss.

And then

only months removed

from her, from promising we would

swear off everything, we could fall into

our feelings again,

this time in the way she

always has an imaginative story

for why

she is running late.

tail end of life

her stories  

built heart,

                                                                                                                    became tales. 

The lens split, but

these pictures should be enough

to remember how it worked,

felt.

Talk is how we think.

I remember I read that somewhere.

Seems so oddly useless

on these unsparing nights

with the sky pink

like a fresh burn,

superimposed behind those

worn-out mountains that cast complicated shadows

over-top these opine-less pines that loom around us

with life -- like life -- as a creek speaks

over the clicking of twigs underneath

our planted asses,

for what seems like our final night in adolescents,

before we leave another husk among us, wrung out, outgrown

like a shrunken garment until we have only our simple talk

that starts with 

"remember

when."

For now,

we work like drinks and cigarettes

on stress-less eves:

We liquored, we simple,

each out breath so serene-

ly lethal.

Our smoke

hangs fog-like low, tethered above us

while we strike up conversations

like used matches

Useless, all of this, we likely forget,

except that overall,

simple

                                                          happiness.

The veins in mom's hands used to be

pronounced and colored, equal hues

blue, purple and green.

That was before I discovered

they are actually late-autumn trees,

leaveless and humble and quietly ready

to branch into story.

how beautiful

isn't it

that sunset

superficial and noisy

I heard it boom

when it appeared

like everything in our homes

decided to fall over together

then a mountain range worth

of smoke rolled towards us

rolling rolling rolling

growing into itself

just like we did but

without the coding

to know when to stop

it became a tower

it climbed its own back

surpassing the heights of any wave

tidal or otherwise

it even built itself so high at one point

that had any planes been looking for a land

they would have surely been 

swallowed by its greatness

like a king drinking his land's finest wine

and then as a prophecy

would imagine or predict

it reached the heights of giants

it reached the heights of gods

it fashioned hinges out of itself and securely

clamped into the clouds like carabiners on a climb

sealing off the sky entirely as if to say I hope 

you can at least remember 

the stars

how beautiful

isn't it

that sun

superficial and noisy

colliding into our planet as if 

somebody 

is starting over

You're exciting in

The deep familiar and

You are everything

You're exciting in

The deep familiar but

You were everything

when yr detached or estranged,

I can know nothing about you.

I can listen as a stranger would,

with no real ties into yr world.

I can solve yr cloudiness.

I can bring you back to clarity,

remind you how to smell rain,

stone and clay.

I cannot prove it, but

you can trust my word.

I am a no placebo.

I am the master and

I can clean up yr hurt.

I can take you to an anechoic room,

help you hear how yr beautiful heart

pushes blood into yr beautiful lungs.

I have separated skies like water.

I am breaking the fourth wall now

as you read, and

using my energy to

help two moose untangle antlers

in some lonesome, coved inlet so

they do not expend their energy

and freeze

beneath the water.

I am real

as yr pain, as arbitrary as my

examples, as hard to stay with

as sunlight refracting

through clouds, air and glass,

and into your eyes.

This is yr distraction.

With no real ties to your world,

I can listen as a stranger would.

I can know nothing about you

when yr detached or estranged.

because I live so you,

yr love.