the small explosion did it, skyward

you tumbled too. chapped limbs

smacking sunrays good

morning.

shoulders of honeycrisp apples, the

bitten lip and hives. neither

of us do well with mountains or tumors: tenacity usually

reserved for philosophizing, not this sanitized endurance.

two months later, skill will swaddle its skirt of early fortune

and we will be grooming the slopes, grooming the children,

grooming the sick back to brightness

                            & she’ll dash like light to a Tuscan sun.

 

we just can’t see the neck of the mountain

from here.

the sun licks our face and says:

it is lonely at the top, and this is my excuse to

shut the eyes and clip my wings.

i shudder and you drink my misgivings

and are not yet sick.

 

you, sturdy as bone, graze my

courage and dare to scrape my

brain, fat with fruit pulp and hype.

i lay you on your side

and scrape my voice down your throat

and unbutton my spine for you

and offer everything in me as sorry

and you never get sick.

 

crying

in that cavity above my lungs, what

do I flee when I dive into phonemes?

this