106.

How shall I hold you

you who is not my mother’s child or my own?

We have no shared blood

you are not my kin

there is no reason for me

to hold on to you

die for you

kill for you

make breakfast for you on Thursday morning

& yet I fold you into myself

like a signature beyond script

 

107.

You pointing at the stars & me at you

like stars we’re made of nothing

& headed to nothing

but the journey through

to this the most sublime of moments

 

Is this what it means to be a star?

 

Here is our fondest path yet

you pointing at the stars

& me at you pointing at the stars

evolution & revolution

 

You’re complete, you said this morning

you’re complete

but we’re flaming out, we’re flaming out

 

Is this what it is to belong in the country of stars?

108.

I have forgotten which lines I whispered to which love

Some lovely phrases borrowed from conversations in the breeze

Solemn words, heavy with heartbreak or history

Lightness, lightness, light

Words like giggles

Words like songs
Allow me to rephrase then

What I’ve told all of them:

It’s you, just you, only ever you

 

109.

A dialogue meets a woman on a bench across the street from the coffee shop

she’s white, blonde

middle-aged

cell phoned

 

twenty minutes later

a man returns

but she’s gone already

 

Same dialogue meets him at that bench scross the street from the coffee shop

he’s First nations

young

drumming, drumming

an upturned cap on the ground in front of him

there are a few coins in it, or not

he sings where she had been speaking

into satellites stringed across sky

 

a dialogue meets the man

who drums out the din in the coffee shop across the street

where young hipster laptopped people socialize

with the background of rabid metal music behind them

 

110.

we climb together

you hand firmly on my arm

come, let’s go

iridescent blue across obsidian

& after all that riding

after sweat

come, let’s go again