On Waking Up the Next Morning with Back Spasms & A Cracked Rib
for Rob K.
I want to align my spine
with yours, I want to get on all fours
and carry you places. I’d be enlightened
if I could with anybody, everybody
this way, tumbling in the cold
damp grass the night before a snowstorm,
reeling against each other and losing
track of where we meet, a limber kind of trust
I wish I had with my own seesaw heart.
Can I just for once stop doubting myself,
get a little closer to that peace
I keep asking for, enough to reach across
that distance stitched with hello-how-are-you-
what-do-you-do-for-a-living, how about you
climb on my back, then I climb on yours,
the grass here to catch us in our crash
landings, and oh please let us slip out
of these suits called you and me, let’s wrestle
with why happy can’t be our modus operandi,
this ache of our bodies to do more than get
from Points A to B, baiting sex,
trading scars, housing a ledger of days
we failed and people we couldn’t save—listen
to this prayer of skin and loose limbs, an ecstasy
of me not acting like me in fact not acting—
help me out of my head and all its long division,
let’s loop-de-loop, tug-of-war, flip a torso,
let’s remember what it was like before our bodies
pushed us so many snow drifts apart,
to laugh while falling.
