i was wild once
i ran with wolves
and lived off the land
who was my mother
i ate the wind
and drank the rain
the sun warmed my skin
while the dark taught me fear
by the moon and stars
i found my way
and by the cycles of seasons
i knew my place in the world
unfettered and unbound
i was free as any bird
unconquered and unexplored
untamed by any man

10 pm in front of Chipotle
and you said, this is my [rusty] Chevy [something],
which had a radio that played exceptional static
for us to tune out on the trek to Mount Washington.

It was raining, but we had already driven all that way
and so we stood outside anyways
in the low hanging clouds above Pittsburgh.

I said, I’ve never been on a date
         with a girl      before.

And you said, is it everything you thought it’d be?
And with that

we decided to see who could throw a rock the farthest
[which you won]
and who could name more constellations
[which nobody won, because there
were no stars in sight on that Tuesday night].

Then the couple next to us left
and a new one arrived
and the blanket of fog temporarily lifted
to reveal the UPMC logo.

We watched as the number of tiny office lights
diminished, looking a little bit like an end of the world
power outage in slow motion—

and we silently shrunk in the weight of the moment
as the Earth turned and dragged the seconds along,
and the water of the Allegheny and Monongahela
merged into the Ohio the way our bodies connected at the hands;
two posterchildlesbians showing a city
how
         to
                     fall
                                 in love.

At first I was nothing, vast without contrast.
But then I passed all that… I became a dot,
And thought the whole universe was mine
Until a line appeared!
And as that line neared me,
I feared the end of my existence.
But with persistence,
this line convinced me to come along…
So I joined, I now had momentum.
You couldn’t stop me I was all I could be!
But up ahead, another line appeared
and I feared a collision would leave me dead
so I veered left.
And became a right angle,
tangled in a web of myself
and my wealth and my worth.
I’d turned inward once,
so I thought, why not once more?
And as I did this I realized I was traveling parallel to myself, back toward the beginning of my existence.That dot I thought I once was! Suddenly I stopped
because far off to my left I saw a door
I hadn’t seen before.
So I turned inward once more toward that door,
My new destination!
And when I arrived at that door
I realized that I was not a dot,
or a line, or an angle.
I was a square! I was a shape,
give me a cape and I could be a character.
I thought, it doesn’t get any better than this!
This must be bliss this must be…
Awkwardly, I heard a knock, knock knock.
So I opened that door, expecting to find someone behind it knocking. Only all I found was another line descending downward.
So I followed that line into a blinding white space, which I assumed was hollow.
Due to the echo when I yelled
“Hello”… Hello… Hello…
“Is anyone there?”… Is anyone there?…
Is anyone there?…
Unaware of my surrounding the
line abruptly became a point
which diverged perpendicular in two directions.
I became confused as to how one became two? Still, I moved onward.
But then, when two became four I
could no longer ignore the possibility
that I was probably more than
the four corners of this square,
And when four corners became six sides,
eight points and twelve lines
I realized that I had depth!
I was not just a dot, or a line, or a square…
I was a cube! I had three dimensions dude!
And I thought, it doesn’t get any better than this.
This must be bliss this must be…
Then I heard laughter and a voice told
me to unfold myself, and I said what?
And again, quite clearly,
a voice told me to unfold myself.
So I listened, and as I did this
I realized I was not a dot,
or a line, or a square, or a cube…
I was a thought, unfolded into a cross,
accosted by love that seemingly
had nowhere else to go.
And I thought, it doesn’t get any better than this.
This must be bliss this must be…
And again I heard someone laughing
And a familiar voice asked me,
“Do you think this is it my friend?
Do you think it ends here?
Don’t you know, it keeps going!”