what if…

What if this poem was about me finding you

About you finding me

about how the search ended

but we kept looking anyways;

about the light and the dark melding?

What if this was about a beacon

finding its home

a nest roosting its crow

what if nothing

But—

what if everything?

 

The cereus torch bloom

was dawn’s precious predecessor

I thrust at you some star-washed night

fertilized by moonlit bees

the sweat of magic things

unspoken dreams,

archetypes born of

hearts over minds

of knowing what’s for them

what’s for you,

and what’s true

What if I was the crazy diamond

cooing your songs

Into the shrouds of prickly pears

head cocked up at the red sun of Mars

waiting for a sign,

for the fabric in the sky

to shift back to when

we were One?

 

What if I were the black-lamp sky

wishing for a shooting star

the ones your eyes revealed

the ones in my mind’s heart

since before forever

since the first day

of my life?

 

What if it was everything

and nothing before?

What if the venom

was a smokescreen

the vitriol a futile defense

a shield and armor coat

against remaining in Love’s limbo

waiting for a word, a sign, a promise

that I wasn’t really a mistake

as I was in

the womb?

 

What if every day’s end

Found me suffering with seawater eyes

reeling, no flinching at every

 

song—

 

memory—

 

promise—

 

 

I know if you saw me you would know

And when you knew me you could See

And when you see me you will Feel—

 

What if now, what if forever?

What if this was the future’s journal

Because I went to see you, “to be sure,”

what if time and again

and every time thereafter

this was the sand

slipping through our fingers

and this was our chance to

fend off

the ghosts we knew?

 

—to show them all

once and for all

show them now

before forever?

 

–2018. El Sereno, CA.