There will come a day when the fear of death will be the favorite joke passed amongst corpses,
and they are already laughing.
My love, please don’t be afraid,
but there will come a day
when mice play in our empty sockets,
when our bones become homes for living creatures other than our egos,
and when time will jostle our skeletons out of the composition that is me and you
and will write with us love letters that spell I.O.U eternity.
If we believe in life after death then I often wonder why we assume the dead like coffins,
when people were never meant to live in boxes.
So I pray that our children have the good sense to leave us a little wiggle room,
leave us exposed like stray dogs in a thunder storm, and
I will hear the breeze but not know it as the breeze, and
I will feel the rain but not know it as the rain, and
I will behold the sky but not know it as the sky.
Instead I will hear the breeze and think it is your laugh returned to the hearth of my ear, and
I will feel the rain and think it is the pinprick of your kiss, and
when the rain is tender I will know something has softened you, and
when the rian is violent I will know something has shaken you, and
in this newfound understanding without eyes or ears or hands or lips
our bare bones will make love in the dirt,
never knowing our nakedness.
Imagine.
A rough wind coursing through a calligraphy of weeds.
In our disrepair we have grown gardens of ourselves;
sprouts of curious grass shooting form our eyes sockets.
Your knuckles hard, smooth skipping stones meant for child’s play, and
the develish sun picking its way through your missing teeth, and
neither one of us can keep from smiling these days, and
the days go unnoticed and the nights go unslept, and
we talk with our souls through the holes in our ribs where organs once sat.
Imagine.
Your skull and mine both reduced to grins,
both washed clean of our grins and our skins,
growing young again,
forgetting why we ever wrinkled or
why we ever furrowed our brow with the plow of anger.
Become dust with me,
insignificant and everywhere,
for I will love you even after your marrow has become a whisper
and your bones nothing but the snickering of gravel.
Let us soak in the spaces our shadows left behind,
your skeleton laced with mine.
I will tie your soles to my ankle and know what it is like to step into a dream,
and you will try on my backbone and see how bad it hurt the day you said you were calling it quits.
I don’t remember why you left or why you came back;
I don’t know how many years have passed— not really sure years pass at all.
All I know is the rain falls.
You kiss me like a rainfall.
Sun,
it bleaches us clear and every day is a romance.
All this to say we’re already laughing.
There is a wedding of earthworms and pebbles waiting when our tuxedo skeletons no longer fit.
There is a place for our faces to lie planted beside
forever smiling.
There exists a place where we can be still and in love.
There exists a place where we can still be in love,
just two gentle skulls.
