My favorite trips are the ones I never took

In Kazakhstan there are trees submerged in Lake Kaindy
who instead of rotting have remained frozen in time, heavy
with icy spruce--and I feel strangely in touch with them.

Sometimes I'm self-sustaining on a single kiss, like any insect
of the Coleoptera order, literally, sheathed wing, the ones that crack
into the summer soil and bury themselves between dry blades of grass
and decomposing springtime--

I am a lot more of myself inside my head, terribly forward and
magnanimous, always curious and split into hundreds of questions
firing like these silvery synapses or a school of minnows refracting in and out, i'm afraid of never letting her go, that my fear of falling through every open door will forever deter me from finding that she is the best and most beautiful part of me.

that I will never change seats and let her continue on in thrilling fantasies of how I almost was--what I almost said and what could have been, building ecosystems around laughs and
hands and that feeling when in the low tangerine glow
two people pull up their shirts and press their skin together
unfolding in soughs as if they are gales rushing through
each other's sails, fluttering between knees and
glowing in barns.

she is there and wants to try everything, the most careful exhibitionist in daisy leaves and doily patterns, barefoot in your room with dandelions between her toes, wisps of cotton quilted into her hair, unwavering in the light and ever more in the dark, and when I am silent she is in the background quoting John Keats and Dylan Thomas, taking your fingers to trace her own lips, effervescent and tireless in the ways that she loves you without regard--

I want to let her go
I want to let her go