should have been enough to see things with our eyes.

to sit on the corners of streets

to chew gum in our mouths

and wipe our imaginings

on one another’s shirt sleeves.

i imagined you to be something fleeting:

a lightning bug

i had to catch with my own two child hands

instead of the boy

who stood with eyes

awake before me, a map of moving bones,

and a yellow hat on a head like my own head.

you and your mind:

not a constellation to fold inside of my fist

but the air unwrapping above us, an uncertainty.

should have sent me rejoicing

in the absence of all edges, mapless, but for

the curb against the street

and the indent of your elbows

and your stories about the girl who lived next door

and the way you loved her with your eyes closed.

streetlight-strewn, your mind:

the light we spoke inside of when i

pulled that hat from your head

and tugged it over my eyes and waited for your laughter.

just the slow thump

under t-shirt under ribs:

an x to mark my belonging.