Whenever I feel like a sinking ship I think of that time
I sat behind you in third grade and you accidentally
dropped your pencil into my hand, so in order to get it out
you had to cup your palm over mine and pretend
my fingers were an octopus and you were the ocean
swimming between them. Dogs can pick up frequencies
so high that not even humans can hear them;
my ears are tuned to the sound of your every move,
whether it be snore, exhalation, or sneeze.
I imagine kissing you once for every time
the dinosaur bones in the glass cases at the museum
on all those elementary school field trips didn’t come alive
like we thought they would, and then I realize
that would be a lot of kisses, and maybe
we could grow something between our mouths, like a tiny galaxy
filled with 20 comets and our own personal Milky Way,
like all those horror stories about if you swallow a watermelon seed,
the fruit’s vines will climb their way up your stomach
until you turn red and green too.