girl, you're sitting there and I can feel the
hairs rising on the nape of our necks,
the sizzle arising in our chests
and the subtle turn of events when

you get up to leave and,
like flicking off a switch,
you extinguish
me.

we were twelve and we packed thirteen passion-fruit juice boxes,
crackers and peanut butter because who can survive without peanut butter?
the three long hours we were
walking then
running then catching our breath at the corner of
Kennedy and Lincoln.

having lunch in a ditch and rolling down hills and
I can remember everything.
I bet you can too, the

cars screaming past us on the highway and the
darker it got the faster we scrambled and we ended up
exactly where we started but

we tried to run away and we returned
not with our tails drooping between our legs but
stick-straight and in the air because
we'd had adventure for the first time,
we'd crossed the street holding each-
other's hands, not
our mother's anymore.

and I wish I was
in that ditch again,
with you sticking your fingers in the peanut butter because we forgot a knife

not with you, "dead in a ditch somewhere"
like they say you are.

you should never go looking for something
because then IT can't find YOU.

and as natural as things are today (not at all)
I WOULD mind if you held my hand (not at all)
just not too hard because that would mean we had something and
we don't.

yesterday I spoke to the moon.

after a time, with the distance and all
I hardly expected an answer but when
I felt her sigh, I knew she had heard me so I
climbed to the top of a nearby car and
asked her if she could, please,
repeat that.

she hadn't been spoken to in so long, she confided,
she had grown ancient and old and she felt we no longer
spoke her language and
we no longer cared to.

she spoke for a long while, I felt her growing closer and the gap between us
closing. I felt a calm like the calm you feel at sea, and the
calm you feel in the warmth of another person.

if I reached my hands up I could touch surface and
feel her old majesty.

humbled, I asked if once more she could dust the earth with her wind
and kiss my skin, but before she could answer
a car horn ripped the sound waves open and left them
gagging.

as I refocused, my moon seemed as far away as ever
and I folded myself into my coat and went
on my way, disheartened,
to say the least.

it wasn't until, glooming the night away on my couch,  the 11 o'clock news said
that strange and powerful winds were sweeping the nation,
then I knew
my moon
had heard me.

sometimes being happy seems
a self-indulgence:

you were singing songs from the musical in me,
us, sipping sweetened tea beaneath the trees
that crazy summer afternoon

things I thought but never said
to you and
things I thought but always said
over and over as if
nothing else had ever happened to me

and the thing I thought
when I thought of that
was that I thought
an awful lot of
you

I wish I could fill your glass to the brim
and have you
                   over
                      flowing
always.

just not
when I am
looking.