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I see a beginning and an end
clasped within the lines of your palms, echoing
in the ripples of your irises;

I remember the apricot april morning
stumbling over your outstretched legs
in the park which I had never seen as
anything more than a cut-through, but
my life changed course and the park
became a destination and I still don’t know
when I noticed that I was waking up
twenty minutes earlier just to
talk to you before work, just to hear
your lilting voice flow through my ears and
fill my mouth with ideas;

And I remember the dew drops kissing my feet
when you convinced me that it was practically illegal
to wear shoes in june and I watched as
the grass pressed hatched patterns into your skin
and for a moment I wished that they were my fingers
holding you in eternal summer lawns, swan choruses,
whirring rollerskates, the smell of peach blossoms;

And I remember you blooming and shedding
the remnants of your cocoon as you pointed out
made-up constellations littering a swelling august sky,
connecting the dots into shapes and people and things
while the only shape I could see in the blinking cosmos
was a question mark, a beginning and an end;

And I remember how your shoulders fitted inside my arms,
how your smile tilted to one side, how you only had one dimple;

And I remember when we kissed under an umbrella,
hearing the rain applaud across the taut fabric and we
laughed, pushing our fingers through, bridging two worlds,
and we built a bridge between us, intertwined our laces and
tangled our thoughts and interlocked our ribs, merging
into one heartbeat, one mouth, two sets of eyes reflecting
mirror-images and I swear I saw the constellations burst
across your collarbones and mountains fold between
your brows and the grass left its trailing fingerprints down
your arms and I held you like the lawn and I was the
summer skies and the park and the chorus of swans,
the glazed cicada shells, the clicking of the sprinklers,
a child crying far away with a bright cotton-candy pink face
and I was you and you were me and the beginning ended
And the ending began because

I remembered the girls I had loved before;
-the smell of pinecones and a habit for painting
her toes different colours, who taught me not
to have sex in the woods, how to escape a bear,
-blue eyes and fingers laced with paper-cuts,
the avid reader who taught me every story has
a beginning and a middle and an end,
-classical music, the taste of southern comfort,
who taught me how to drink, how to throw up,
how to survive a hangover
-and the girl with a crooked smile
but one dimple, the one who’s shoulders
fit in my arms, who let me hold her like a lawn,

and I saw the beginning in her outstretched legs
and I saw the end in her outstretched arms
pooling into the drying September grass
and I saw the end in her footsteps breaking every
stained-glass puddle, in the question mark I saw printed
across the night sky, in the quietness of winter,
muffling our words so the bridge began to collapse
and I saw the end in the gap between her shoulderblades,
how it made her taut skin curve like an umbrella
and how there was a rainstorm on the other side that I couldn’t
reach. I saw the end in her downcast eyes, how they were
so full of tears that they only reflected the white clouds
overhead, it rippled in her irises and i
could only add her to the list of girls that I had loved
as the one that taught me a beginning is worth
an end.

she fell in love with another reflection, tumbled into
the wet tarmac below, left a red halo smeared into
the white clouds as the question mark faded
from my view and I tripped over another pair of
out-stretched legs in a busy subway station,
and the station became the destination and in the
lines of her palms I saw
a beginning.