i tried to write a poem that wasn't about you
but nothing came to mind

we spoke through the silence of shadow-puppets
on a borrowed brick wall stage
     we'd made our home

we'd whisper secrets to each other
in the same morse-code voices
     that flashlights use to speak to the stars

i guess you were right
you really could fold space like a map
and you really did punch right through it

back to the days of dandelion dreaming
     tasting the sweetness at the center
     and squeezing the sap from the stems
onto our dirt dusted hands
          frantic finger-painting on the cement dance floor that we bloomed from

back to the sage-dressed lake bed
     she laughs
and boasts silently to the sky of her emerald depths
     i laugh
and boast ineloquently to the bottle's neck of my mermadic swimming
          always got my head beneath the surface
     but this isn't suffocation
               no
          just transformation

i am on the rise

back to the nights of meteor showers at the top of the world
from the hood of my car
     sharing candy bars and over-ripe secrets
it's the browning fruit that tastes the sweetest
          so freedom must be the color of garden soil
     or maybe just the same shade as your eyes

back to the laughter
erupting from our child-like bellies
like hot water
     from granite springs themselves
remember?

back to the tents
     and firepits
     and unmapped road trips with no end in sight

back to the chapter
with the "happily-ever-after"
     and the monsters under the bed packing up for a holiday in spain

back to the light
that's how i'll survive

now and then
i catch the dream screen wrinkling
and reality begins thinning
     like the hair on the crown of your head

it's then that i wonder
if we're stationary when we rest
     or if we're truly capable
     of traveling both space and time
     with just the silken strength of our sleepy synapses

do our lines connect
when we're clinging like dew-drops
to the threads of the dream web?

in my head
you hear my voice
     echoing through your slumber
like classical music through a dance hall

but
     maybe you can't hear me at all

maybe you're just as far away as ever

i dreamt of bathing
in the condensation pools
left spilling onto car-door handles
by words we half-whispered so many moons ago

i imagine it felt an awful lot
like the way you felt
when you were eight years old
and your mother's minister
lowered your head into that stream

     something you'd thought you'd wanted
until the moment showed it's teeth

if i could write the way that you'd speak
my days of slinging beer would be behind me
     and i'd be sinking my teeth in to my third or fourth release

i just can't remember your voice

but i do remember your eyes
and if i could paint anything as gorgeous
as the way that you saw the world around you
     i might finally understand what you were always trying show me

i'm miserable at sorting through clues
     though i have been spending nights on end
sifting and measuring the magic of you
that still can't evade me

i still can't write when i think of you
     my mind becomes clouded with scenes of the rearview
and of your freckles, too
and hidden hazel curls tucked beneath that dusty wollen brim
          
     oh, how i long to be the feather so lucky as to live above it

but sometimes we feel things
that can never be taken back
     not for a refund
     and certainly not for exchange

sometimes our hearts know more than our heads ever could

and your pulse should no longer be on the tip of my tounge
or the wheeze in my lungs
     though i'm starting to think that you'll always be

four years of scribbling nonsense
     and you're still the well that my pen tirelessly drinks from