we breath in the ashes
of unforgivable mistakes.
Footsteps at fifteen through the streets
of Nagasaki.
Ten years later,
shadows remain in the pages
of your mind.
I'll pass you ten papers
to extract how much
you hate and love
this place.
Carolina summers,
I'll take my peace with the rain
and mix it with our sorrows
and quit playing the game.
If you knew how I gasp
at the little insignificances of
a four year old's dreams,
or how I laugh when falling off swings;
if you knew how deep I dive
or how frantically I search for the other half,
I doubt you'd stay here.
I'm breathing in the ashes of
the past eight months, handling the
elements of disappointments and
inconsistencies; I'm blowing away
the fluffs of dandelions and laughing out
loud at our existence in aviators,
my survival on creamsicles.
And my determination to taste
another means of living.
I nod, you nod. We nod together.
On a rock above the Eno, we can't
help but watch the delicate cranes and
the light refracted off the surface.
The tips of trees tickled my consciousness
and whispered summer secrets to
my ever-listening soul.
Give us Thunder, or give us Snow.
We're all lonely, even when we're together.
Give me the bottom of the river
in the palm of your hand, presented
with sticky theories of living and
papers on dead war heroes.
Their horses are trudging on without
masters, skeletons chatter and clatter
like sticks on bones in the pits of France.
Sometimes we live it like we
write it, and sometimes I take that
inspiration and record it for
a later date.
Memory of you will fade,
but words last forever.
