for Rob K.

I want to align my spine
             with yours, I want to get on all fours

and carry you places. I’d be enlightened
             if I could with anybody, everybody

this way, tumbling in the cold
             damp grass the night before a snowstorm,

reeling against each other and losing
             track of where we meet, a limber kind of trust

I wish I had with my own seesaw heart.
             Can I just for once stop doubting myself,

get a little closer to that peace
             I keep asking for, enough to reach across

that distance stitched with hello-how-are-you-
             what-do-you-do-for-a-living, how about you

climb on my back, then I climb on yours,
             the grass here to catch us in our crash

landings, and oh please let us slip out
             of these suits called you and me, let’s wrestle

with why happy can’t be our modus operandi,
             this ache of our bodies to do more than get

from Points A to B, baiting sex,
             trading scars, housing a ledger of days

we failed and people we couldn’t save—listen
             to this prayer of skin and loose limbs, an ecstasy

of me not acting like me in fact not acting—
             help me out of my head and all its long division,

let’s loop-de-loop, tug-of-war, flip a torso,
             let’s remember what it was like before our bodies

pushed us so many snow drifts apart,
             to laugh while falling.