I tip-toe up your spine,
a ladder for gentle fingers.
I count each tickled vertebra.
(You flinch at only three.)
Your small body is like a feather in my lap,
yet your spindly legs reach past my knees.
When did you grow so tall?
Nine years I have over you,
and though your child warmth is still heat against my body,
I wonder at the gap
between your world and mine.

I have memorized the silence in your eyes,
which hides a world beyond the film of blue,
a world of words unspoken, hid’n in lieu
of letting me into your mind. Were these lies
You spoke to me to cleanse my brain, appease
these gnawing thoughts like beetles making home
in tender tissue, insecure in roam-
ing, ever-changing emotions like these?
But why be anxious over your desire?
Such careless, ambling adoration my
still heart protests. I do not need a vow
of love in certainty, but merely hand o’er
a soft embrace in secret spaces. Sigh
in place of words, and we’ll stay here for now.

You led me by the hand into deep waters,

dark and tempering,

and with your every simple word,
I found myself not breathing,

until, wrist straining against my writhing,
you dragged me back to air.

And shaking, goose bumps rising, 

I cried for you,

and for the water, which had hugged me

and tried so fiercely to pull me back in.

When I read in the driver’s manual
that You must stop and remain stopped
for any passing emergency vehicle,
I closed my eyes and saw the world stand still,
cars frozen in the streets,
pedestrians perched on one foot,
music drifting off into a silent void.
Only the self-important wail of sirens would dare to pierce
this rare total suspension.

When I first found myself stopping
for an emergency vehicle — a lone
police car — I kept my eyes open
and saw cars crawl to a halfhearted standstill,
one by one along the road,
never the whole world stopping at once.

I watched you place your hands gently on the surface,
and, one finger at a time, probe into the crust,
dust working its way beneath the crescent whites
of your fingernails.
I sat beside you, though your shoulders turned from me,
while you continued to feel your hands into the cracks
in the crust, deliberately, delicately, so sweet.
I had let the moon’s gravity pull me up toward you,
your boyish smile toying with my body
until I could not resist the month alone on your world,
held in close by the purest space.
But your grin had not been for me —
rather for your lady love, dear Luna,
who filled your softened gaze with her pale glow.
And so, as the moon met the earth once more,
I dug my heels into the dust beneath me
and flew into that void between gravities,
knowing that the earth would embrace me again.
And I will love the moon from far below,
to know that I have seen her in your eyes.