Under the evergreens I take your hand.
Clutching you I discover a similarity.
Your nails are brittle and stained edges of the pinecones.
Beneath the fingertips crammed dirt and sand.
Who knows what else lies under there, I don’t want to.
Rubbing you the wrong way, the nails drag and snap.
The opposite direction feels silky, wooden.
One cone detaches from a limb, falls in our lap.

Hands smelling of old forest’s deaden life.
Smelling of all school chapel outside.
Wonder if Dieu meant for us to smell that way.
Wouldn’t he have put it in the good book?
Dirt and what else flies through us in each new breath.
I feel the evergreen within me calling out.
What is He saying to you with that aroma?
Perfume ourselves in eau de pomme de pin.

Woven together our palms become a pine cone.
Notice tessellations of body parts and cones.
Where I stop, you begin, overlapping, lapping.
Blossoming and wrapping till we reach a point.
Forever is hardly a romantic concept.
However, the trees manage to keep green each winter.
Falling all around us, hitting the brown needles, cones.