She and he

The low swooning of dusk kept us from the horizon. We bent over the ridge peering onto the highway, shifted our weight and leapt. It was 6ocklock on a Saturday when that drone of the passing-by cars was lulled into a weep under our thudding bodies. And all I remember was the wisp of her hair as our hearts were mirrored in the myriads of small explosions in each and every car engine; that gasp blooming into fire.

We walked along the sidewalk as if it were tightrope artistry. We wrapped two arms around each other as if we were singly a sweater billowing in the fall winds. We murmured “It’s fall, time to fall in love.” I skipped a stone across a swimming pool steeped with leaves, now turbid like crude oil.

Then, she was a bow being bent into a twig. Yesterday I was a chapped lip.

When we found each other between the twang and tangle of burdock leaves and cicadas, when dust spangled in the forest as sunlight alighted onto it, and the moss crept and ants watched their stepping so that the murmuring of trees was hushed, then were we laced into each other.

She highlights her notes with scented markers. She kisses as if sewing a button onto my jacket. She laughs as if water was thrown onto her at a parade. She folds her letters like pleating dahlias. Her smiles extend the horizon.

We bend over the ridge peering into a temple of tides where China seas meld into the soup of the Mexican Gulf. We tell each other that in every fishy handshake and every licked stamp, in every gaping tire swing, and each and every dulcet doorbell do we unfold into each other, and so with one more gasp we unfolded up and beyond the highway.