For You, duet

I think music sounds the same
to us,
as if our skulls are matching pearl cathedrals
with just the same resonance,
the same banjo bow song
vibrating through our jaws
and cheek bones
making us glimmer
in the dark.

I think poetry feels the same to us,
like words go so far past
basic exchanging of graces
they leap off your pages
shake off their black and white foundations
and edge themselves onto the thermal image
of your heartbeat.
They pick up
where your Technicolor portrait leaves off
and trace the outline of your wrists,
fingertips
and lips.

I hope love will be the same
for us,
the same for me as it is for you
when I am grown enough
to have walked
where you have walked,
I want to light faces
with the spotlight of my eyes
the way you do.

I hope I can teach myself
to love like you,
turn my heart into a snowglobe
swallow the city streetsof my beloved,
tell them, anything you live for
is now safe within me
Your steeple crowds
and snowy hill tops
are all glowing and serene
and I’ll hold them,
like the only way I know to hold you
closely.

When I set out
through midnight streets
and glowing trees
you stepped beside me,
pointing out the ocean,
magnetizing my long broken
internal compass
with your presence.

When I stood amidst
a darkened roar of
basslines laced with instant consequence
I thought of you.
How there are some places
I walk to,
but don’t fit once I settle in.
How I won’t find your
honest gaze amidst these brazen faces.
How I won’t find you anywhere
but here.

When I was left crouching
on bare concrete foundations
of unfinished love
you lent me your pen,
to draw foundations of a structure stronger
than any man’s mistake.
And said:

This is our chance to stand in white fog
whistling to ourselves
building tears shaped like coins
we'll trade them in for road maps
to towns carved from red cedar
You and I,
we'll sleep in wooden churches
count the tree rings in the pews
hold the numbers in our praying hands
only open them for our next embrace
and our eyes will be red cedar
and the tree rings will sing
like the days it'll take for
us to be rid of our coins.

When I first heard you speak
in poetry
I thought words might feel the same for us,
I’m so glad that bus stop
felt the same to us,
like each other’s arms.