My hands would find the notes hidden beneath the skin of your lower back. Pressing into your spine like piano ivory. Taking care to avoid the black keys. Breath to carry the melody past your ticking mind. Warming your belly like fire and hope.

You are so silly sometimes.

Unaware that the song was written all along in the sheet music stretched behind your eyes. I play by ear.. because I see it. And I hear it. And I've heard it before.

It's caught in you. Owned like the tide in the shell.

It is a secret song. Something sweet and strange. Nostalgic. Honest. Beautiful.

When it isn't a siren call...

It is a lullaby.

In the key of "we".

Burn. Burn like wild fires.
Burn like pages. Burn like leaves in autumn.
And send smoke signals.
Curling around my branches like a cat tail greeting to my leg.
I am a carrier pigeon, sometimes.
Other times, an arrow.
But either way.. I'll get there.
You are too big for the spaces between stones.
Be the infinite space between the lines.
And burn the rest to ash.

You'll need a place to rise from.

Where ya been hiding, lightning bug? Screen doors and porches at dusk are just not the same without you. I heard that song that plays when the wind blows through your tree tops again, a Cyprus chorus, the other night. Just a verse. This one:

"And woman. This is where it all begins. Kissing the door **** before the next turn. And woman. It may be where it ends. Letting the bridge smolder, and smoke, and then burn. Shine on. Shine on. Again."

I love it when your wings sing.