When we handed our bodies back to each other:

mine, unsure of its new weight,

felt like a thank you note.

Your hands signatured across my back,

like a downpayment on my sorrow.

I should have known, preacher of poetry,

that there would be no revelation behind your words.

Your mouth like a graveyard, placed fresh flowers

on all the dead things.

Call you no-poet man,

nothing ever rhymed but every word knew me

like an ancestor coming home.

On the balcony, there is an orchestra

chiming beneath the gestures of your cigarette.

Within me there is a city skyline unraveling,

LIT beneath your fingertips.

A buzzing, newly heard, in my bones,

alleviated suppression,

a wishing well coughing up coins,

a gift unleashing three wishes

in your name

a foreign language speaks to me

warm as my mother

tone. Together, you and I, become homeland.

Worthy of return journeys.

On the ride home, our words rise to the ceiling

like the exhaust fumes of our secrets.

No longer up in arms about it, we are in arms about it.

We know this will soon be a dead thing

with a flower on it.

And if we were rioters, we should have rioted for eachother. And if we were believers we would place value on it:

to be held in your hands

like something you once prayed for.