The Vortex...

{Image to come}

Debating shoes was pointless – we were both in bare feet –

but it was fun to make dilemmas for solving:

I heard echoes of her challenges whoosh past my eyes

beneath the hum of my bike-tires revolving.

And really I just wanted to argue again,

              “Let's have lunch.”

She agreed,                               “The cafe,”

and at five-after-two called            “I'm here, where are you?”

from a patio ten miles away.

After this crash, then that crash, I learned to be far;

just to listen and believe she was good.

Every fist fracture, cracked rib and stiff scar she showed me

was an alien – aged, understood

only barely in my daylight (she was inked, sun-cooked, upright;

I was unbroken, shade-white, and falling

through firsts, and then nexts, and then more firsts with her).

Does she feel alone when she's calling;

when she talks at my eyes and they stare back for weeks.

            “Does their silence mean

                         judgment?”Oh, darling –

                                                                    “For all that they know,

                                                                    you began a black hole—but

                                                                              their opinion of you is evolving.”