And all at once, I loved the feel of hands sweeping across my face.

Moving in circles to mark the years I was imagining as we lay still.

The blankets like bark as our roots tangled together sipping wine like rich soil and whispers.

We. The rings. At it’s center. Moving like planets in travel.

Biting our lips shut. Revealing our age, one whispered secret at a time.

Our hearts making rungs to be climbed to our minds. Our minds making light to show the path back to our hearts. And there and back. Again and again.



I loved you the most when you loved me the most.



Had I known the answer to the riddle. I would have bound the hands together when they met. Both facing upward. As if praying to the stars to stop the time and let us live here. When it was best. When it was still before dawn. When you still believed that my shoulders were wide enough to protect us both. Wide enough to carry the world upon.



The weight. It makes my footprints look like canyons in my wake.



Could I have seen that, once again, the falling stars we wished upon were grains of sand passing through the event horizon of our infatuation to fall on us like dust, I would have shouted them back up. Screaming my throat raw.



I have no voice.



There was a time. A time when the titans wished for hearts as large as ours. A time when the moon was brighter as it caught the glow of my hand on your waist. There was a time when our hungry paws found skin and mouths like milk and finger tips like ink and hearts like parchment. And we drank and wrote and laughed so loud the horizon split. The sun coming up as an echo.



There was a time when every answer we’d ever sought could have been written on the palms of our hands and we would not have parted them to read.



A time when we believed that time could stop.



I have read the answers on my palms now.



I wish I had then.