over Jupiter into the Atlantic
undulations of my breathing. Once
every 14 years the bell rings, calling me
home for dinner without exaggeration.
On Saturdays the moon sleeps until
noon, opening the door for strangers
only, like childhood memories of dancing
around my friend's living room:
we didn't start the fire
we would yell as perfumed fists,
like cotton candy, painted our faces
red, black and blue. We could have been
patriots. We could have walked,
the streets turning like peaches in season,
for hours, midnight disappearing
over the horizon as we approached, each step
a minutely proportionate arrow,
finding unseen targets for the first time.
Her eyes closed in me, hands like marionettes
tangled in their own strings, and she
would cry, tears in her hollow eyes that hung
from the eaves of her second-floor room.
Wait for me until the morning, she would often say,
falling madly in love with reflections
of a former life in a distant land, undiluted
mistresses clinging insatiably to walls
of glass and unscented smoke. Together we breathed,
the air long enough to touch, and carved
masterpieces upon each other's skin, blankets,
the bible in our comfortable routine, draping
us in effigy. Together we breathed
and together we burned, ashes of orange sunsets
smothering affection from within, like the time
when I was a child and I fell from the weeping
tree, tears like symbols crashing around me,
into unconsciousness and delight: her breath
resting on my fashioned lapels, pink and worn.
Opening my eyes - two or four I forget -
they, the silent, encircled me, arms of plastic
calmly caressing, tenderly tugging at my clothes
until I rest naked on my front lawn, the night
spitting insults at my undeveloped body,
warm and enticing. A tree spreads
its branches within me, budding, flowering,
fruiting, its roots penetrating and strong,
holding me to the Earth and rising, downward,
like arms and moss.
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