HOME | DD

Description
I think we were almost angels once, you and I, with our fingers
scraping against the sky like beatific wings-
back when our hearts still rustled with the vernal wind
as autumn breathed red from thin crevices that spilled across the bark
sheathing
our empty bones;

when we still listened
to the crooning of the ocean as it echoed between each pine tree
and the voices of molting dandelions as they murmured
"All I ever wanted was to see the sun"
because the howling sequoia hollows were too large to hear them
and the nightingales were too free to care.

We twined our fingers as if they were wheat stalks
waiting to be braided into thistle-crowns fit for martyrs or messiahs
and walked together through a pseudo-Eden where the rye fields
treated us like kings; gave us
budding amaranth in a thousand shades of indigo to wield as scepters
and commanded the uprooted plants to genuflect at our feet
with their leaded limbs-

but the water willows
that befriended my sorrow only stood and trembled,
never bowing beneath the weight of our august souls,
even deadened as they were
with nepenthe pollinated by the wings of honeybees.

I remember the place where we first saw God standing in the rain,
the world unfolding itself across calloused hands like magnolia trees
blossoming in the dirt-filled cracks that lined his palms
while pieces of the sea pooled in footsteps that left their imprints
on clouds white as whispers and pale dreams danced
among the stars.

We took the ether from his lungs
and molded it to fit the moon, carving craters
with the arms of evergreens and aspens so we could hollow out the sky to sit in and
dangle our feet over the edge of the horizon, bottling fire from the sun and watching
heaven bleed into earth
as they dovetailed together to fit their matching gaps
and became whole once more.