Everything Possible

a poem about you and me

I could show you the void, and the star that adorns it. And you can tell me: is it a distraction, a beacon, a destination, or a fracture? I’ll point to the emptiness that surrounds the lonely thing. You’ll marvel at how much light there is in spite. 

I could tell you a story about a rose and a honeybee - 
how in the sweetness held together by soft petals, and beneath the hum of the summer-born daughter, a world was born that could only be paradise.

I could lead you to the door, the one that is many, the one that lives in the pages at the center of me. The door that opens to a different place every time. The one with a frame, so worn, as soft as a palm and as warm as the eyes before a smile.

You could hold out a key and have me guess how heavy it is. Have me turn over my hand to reveal where things fit together.

We could follow the butterfly on its stumbling course, chasing the setting sun all of us.
And we could rest in the woods where the moth holds court, swallowing moonlight with each grateful breath. We could get drunk on the delicate clockwork of the world without you and without me. 

You could hold up the mask, and I the mirror, and we might laugh. You’ll suggest that the mask fits so well because your happiest memories are carved into the very lines. And I might even agree, and let you believe that the waters slipping through those channels are silent. But I hear them, still, and I know that so do you.

I could throw stones at the clouds and knock free the rain that keeps my childhood hostage. Stone, after stone, I fall short and you tell me the sky will never fall again like it did that spring. But, if I aim to the left, just a little, I might loosen the rainbow that hangs so precariously there. 

You could watch the wings held still. The crisscrossing webs inside their frame a trap that you walk into every time. And I could put a hand on your elbow, steady you, and watch for the spider that never comes.

You could pull on a sunbeam and free a blazing thread. Unravel the hydrogen and spool up the light that makes me so tired - that brings me home.

And I could wind the cobwebs of a crescent moon around my fingers, building a cat’s cradle of shadow that keeps you awake - that leads you to the gate.

But what if we twined the two together? I could hold up the silver I stole from the night, and you could wind in the gold you pocketed from the dawn. 

We could spin a thread that tells us what’s possible.