we carry our lives in our pockets,​
our love on strings tied in knots, tattered​
around our necks, pulled down by the weight of urgency,​
of being, without paying mind to the air we breathe​

​on our best days.​

​this is not about an ending.​
there are no meteors shooting towards an unreachable horizon,​
no aurora shimmering, climbing and falling again.​
there is no mirror in the sweet scent of decay,​
no shivering stone awaiting my words.​

​we carry arms-full of bergamot and asters​
into buildings with spires and pools that cool our feet.​
we stand tall in white, bespectacled by sunlit rainbow projections​
beaming through windows where hummingbirds crash like true believers.​
this is not about a beginning.​

​we set out so many times on paths worn in grass,​
from porch steps, from kitchens where we hold each other.​
we walk next to each other along roadways​
our hands in our pockets, forgetting the compassion tendered by another’s touch.​

​this is about the lives we make and the lives made for us.​
there is no shame in the wanting or holding the hand of a dreamer too long.​
there is no weakness in trying.​

​humanity is the latter part of love​
& it’s the meaning, the middle & the understanding that count,​
each a fair distance from where we stand now,​
or as close as our next breath.​

​
~~~​

​