During the summer solstice, it was still you. Hauling your heart
like a map across my skin, and we left the sunroof open, miles and miles
across interstates full of dust and sadness.
We were taught, or one of us was, or both, never to lean our heads out
while the car was moving, or else the overpass would tear them off.
Strange, how finding my way inside you was like that.
The deepening, the rise and fall, the moment of still panic before release.
You with your hand against my back, the catch of fingers against spine,
and your mouth a pseudonym for getting lost.
During the winter solstice, it was still you.
And yes, I would do it all again, hold your hands until the blood ran warm,
give you all of me and not be afraid, until one of us was eighty
and the other was through.
Few things are as lasting as molasses or the permanence of quantum mechanics,
but when your nervous system met mine,
they became nervous for a different reason; they figured out what it means
to have and to hold, to hold until holding gives way to being held.
Being held until being held gives way to giving love, and then receiving,
and for every acre of meadow and forest, for every waterfall and unnamed constellation,
I would say yes, a thousand times yes, to spending the rest of my life with you.
Strange, how the universe expands and accelerates,
like one giant inhalation before the exhale, all of my wanting like that,
my wanting to spend this with you, life or whatever it is we’re living,
a moment maybe, half of one, until this work is done.