You and I are always switching things around,
moving goal posts, tipping cradles, tossing out items worth keeping,
shrinking,
when we should be leaping.

Understand, that I never wanted to break open
hearts, cup cages and split them over my knobby knees,
weave a loom of fire.

You and I are always backing up into each other.
Accidental knotting of our many lies, cons
that collide, goodbyes that transform into beginnings
just when we are both starting to make it.

We scrape the reef, our skins
are raw, our hands are seared by all the lifting.

I’ll not remember your face, but I’ll remember
your wave, your crash, the white froth exiting from
your eyes and slashing me onto the precipice, these fingers
you said were of a savage beauty, curled around the sea star,
that you declared was my name.

We were doomed from the get go, it seems. Push your thighs
against my hips and say my name. I quiet down
the television screens, and knock through the walls
to hear the train.

That’s you, the engine, that mechanical dynamo heading away.

We dip our noses into each other, splash our cheeks with hair,
and pray, loosen the ropes, push out, unfurl
the sails, and I’ll take

the Empress of Ireland, and you’ll seize Queen Anne’s Revenge;

we know our fates, but we’ll still lie. Lovely little whites,
we’ll nod, and smile, making those
footnotes, trying to capture one another’s images
along the progressing light,

but our forms are just shadows against the halved sun.

We won’t remember. But I know I’ve touched you with my god.
For you’ve surely touched me with your god, and then some.