Kayak (part II of a series)

If I were you,
my kayaks would be full of holes
and sink with the weight
of a bottomless want.

If you were me,
your poems would curve
towards the sky,
yield to the water,
find their roots in the earth,
and drift homeless.

We is the space between you and me,
and that space is jaded by growth and time.
Your ribs forget what your spine looks like.
Your toes dream of nuzzling your eyes.
Your octet and your sestet
lay ripped apart on separate sides of the room.
Your medulla oblongata hasn’t spoken
to your belly button in years.

You’re drifting over Lake Kayuga.
You do not slice. You paint the water,
spread it soft like peanut butter.

You’re holding your breathe beneath the waves.
Then, with a barely conscious movement,
the sun’s on your wet body.
A butterfly roll, you call it.

In a field, far away,
the freckles on my back
lace fingers with the grass.
Larvae inch around the blades
in minuscule embraces.
My eyes spread the sky,
roll in the sensation like
a hand dipped into a sack of grain,
like feet sunk in hot blue sand.

Us is a creature formed of relative distance.
Together, there is power
to silence even gulls.
Yet, their tracks on the wet sand span
lonely miles, along an
asymmetrical thread thinning
and thinning, regardless
of who pulls it
or who hangs on.