First, let's come alive together
on our deathbed. Let's give thanks, then, for the love
we refine: my cool hand on your cheek
each morning while you turn in the half-life before dawn,
a cheesecake with too much vanilla
and a fissure like the crater lake atop Hallasan, et cetera.
Let's spend a year together
on the other side of the world, looking toward
solitary roads, and sloughing
off the muck that bred on our hearts.
Let's make love, and let's
hold hands. Let me be too nervous
to call for a week, and then
why don't you smile at me from across the classroom.
Let's go all of middle school
without speaking after we notice each other's skin.
Let's take turns digging
snow tunnels through my yard and finding security
under blankets & winter
coats in your reach-in closet, and then
why don't we bathe together
without shame or agenda.
Let’s meet as we're both walking
the neighborhood with our mothers after dinner,
and then let's shrink
into calm infancies, with no memory of each other,
before our bodies close in
on themselves, and we rejoin the spark at the belly
of the universe as one mass,
burning.
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