To my best friend, for everything. I love you.*

definition seems to elude the soft smile and eyes (the teenage dream desperate to run)
stunned by lightning flashes and ghost hands waving in the dance that--
measure for measure--her limbs follow

how easy it is to love a monolith

where the sour limelight mocks the sweet
rough and uneven and sugared over with the words
echoing in my ears like the thudding thunder that our voices obscure
torn and laughing on the checkerboard we mock

the storms drag on in her eyes while she teaches me
glints of possibility trailing off in abandoned thoughts
poems rising in the night air she breaks
her glow streaming admiration onto our tongues
while the afterimages dance and touch and sing behind my eyelids

the whispers may die and stay stranded on the tile floors
the light ripping holes into the long-dead words
but

suddenly the words are loud
and they float from the unknown and mingle with the revolutions softly dancing
between us

she saved me