Spring Song

Reverse the peeling apart. Reverse the hush hanging on us. Reverse the way your eyes held me in place when you whispered you're selfish. Reverse the last time we lingered. Reverse the last time we touched. Repeat the bright holy bridge strung between our two sets of shoulders.

Reverse shame. Reverse tired. Reverse sleepless nights. Reverse homework. Reverse panic. Reverse dehydration. 

Repeat hands quilting skins. Repeat our strange language. Reverse all the ways we fell away from each other.

Reverse silhouettes. Sexism. Scraping the barrel. The times I cringed at your height. The times you spoke me into smallness. Reverse I made you feel guilty. Reverse I made you feel shame. Reverse all the busses, trains, all the highways between us.

Reverse pulp of blame. Reverse gauze of intention. Reverse what went sour and replace it with seashells. Reverse ambiguity.

Replace with some dignified memory of clear steady speech.

Repeat brother, repeat fireplace, repeat season of turning, repeat autumn, and starlight, and songs without words.

Reverse hesitations and stammering tongues. Repeat sitting on a rock and sighting a coyote together.

Strange is the synchronous. Strange is the cusp. Strange was the tilt of me toward you the instant I met you. Strange is the shape of you in front of a campfire the first time I saw you. Strange is the crackle and snap of a fire. Be safe in the fire, you said when you blessed me before I got on the plane. Strange is desire, how it disregards rules. Strange is your beard. Strange are your limbs. Strange how I thought I would never.

Reverse all the explaining. Reverse all the pride. Reverse when I told you it wasn't enough. Reverse your wounded ego. Reverse my wounded ambivalence. Reverse all the ways I had already learned not to trust myself by the time that I met you.

Reverse the elk in the road. Reverse the sky over the road. Reverse the slamming together and the slamming apart. Repeat the light pouring out through the whites of your eyes.

Reverse me boarding a plane. Reverse you measuring soil samples. Reverse maps, distances, reverse our ambitions. Reverse all the times I expressed dissatisfaction to other people.

Reverse wounds and withholding. Reverse making excuses. Reverse all the edges of what I'm trying to say.

Reverse that I asked you for solitude and then you gave me solitude. Reverse that I told you to stop crowding me, and then you stopped crowding. Reverse when you went much farther away than I ever meant when I asked.

Reverse I was cold. Reverse you were needy. Reverse all the un-grace that is part of our story. Reverse when you asked me to guard your life through the summer. Reverse how I chose silence and now there is just silence.