she pulls my blurry face from the mirror
and begs me to look out

begging me away from my folded brow
and my big nose
begging me to turn my back on the
turbulent mythology behind me
and look toward
the miracle lightning happening
all the time
all around us

she begs me to see it the way she does
myself and the world

all the smiles on the bright-eyed faces
all the slow moving water
glimmering in the starlight
all the kaleidoscope trees
with their infinity fingers
scratching at the sky

and so we are emerging
correction:
she is already dancing in the twilight
and i have begun to crawl toward the glow
i am a small broken-open seed
and she is the daylight on the face
of the sloping hill above me

she wants to introduce me to
all her friends beside smoldering coals
and all the painted clouds
on the yawning horizon and
all the neighborhood cats
that she nicknamed

at night in her bed
my feet hang off the end
hovering over the abyss
or the discarded clothing on the floor
rest them on the wood
she says begging from
her knees in front of me
bury them here in the ground
she begs me to grow roots
and stick around

at night in her bed
when i'm drunk on
the smell in her neck
and we're churning up
a confluence together
sometimes i wonder
if she's more in control than i am
with her hands on my chest
and her whispered words on my breath
i'm raptured
dumbstruck by the grip
lobotomized by her tongue

but you should've seen her when
i bought her flowers
the huge embrace
the long wet kiss
she doted on them for weeks
admiring them like the turning of planets
in a telescope
and i was admiring her then too

you should've seen her hair
that first time
the shapes it made in the sunbeam
like a hurricane candle
flickering against the wall
the way it tangled in my fingers
like her whole body was absorbing me

you should've seen her beg