my large and loud one, here’s your homework:
follow in my footsteps, stalk sunshine, soles bare
watch out for the burrs and spines!
floorboards splinter like bone fractures 

follow me through stalks of sunshine, soul bared
while your empty skins hang on lines
you’re splintering, floorboards like bones fracturing
underfoot, kiss the catkins

as your empty skins hang. in lines,
daytime stars shine on low-sky ceilings
while under heaven’s foot, you kiss the catkins
with eager up-bellied mouths
daytime stars shine on low-sky ceilings
and sometimes it snows on barley fields
who are eager and up-bellied. mouths
whisper across mountain ranges: 

“sometimes it snows.” in barley fields,
watch out for the burrs and spines.
you must whisper across mountain ranges.
here’s your homework, my large and loud one.

"blue-green or blue-purple?" i ask.
we're talking about veins. you ponder it, look at your wrists (i could loop my thumb
and forefinger round them with room to spare. they're curiously small and i think of
sparrows)
and decide "both".
"you can't be both," i say, and it's my turn to look. 
sure enough, purple canals wend their way off of blue rivers, their estuaries tinged
green where your arm becomes a hand. it's a strange afternoon, cloudless but the
light feels blunted, your garden an echo of itself. summer didn't wake up, it lies
drowsily in the sky, you and me doing the same underneath.
you say something and i miss it, caught outside myself in a sudden awareness of
how soon this present will sigh and roll over into the past and there's nothing to be
done about that at all. your pulse flickers where i'm holding it captive. i blink.
"hmm?"
"cup of tea?" you look like you aren't sure whether you're allowed to have asked. i
stand up and brush myself off, then smile at you. "genius," i declare. "yes".
i stretch out my hand, an unfolding from myself, and you take it.