Already, without you, I am a long dark highway:
a journey, taken alone, at great risk.
So many rules, as we grew, hemmed us in:
don’t shout, don’t run, don’t cuss, don’t blush, don’t show.
Now we must be encouraged,
like so many little birds,
to fall or fly or sing, or other foreign things.
So I head west, alone:
a pair of bright lights, climbing and falling among the mountains.
The steep inclines, the tree line, pines.
clinging fog, sticky and multiplying,
folding the mountaintops into the sky,
all but evangelical.
We were easier then: we are dying, now.
Bury me here in the limey dirt:
with cups and bowls and spoons and soap,
mint leaves and the dozen ways we call the moon.
Open your dark coal heart,
and let me find my way home.