The Lucky Ones
I am warned against marrying
early love. I am also told
it works out, sometimes,
for saplings can be braided like hair.
We will bend and grow together
while the centuried oaks at Toomer’s Corner
hollow, and the college tree poisoner
brags on the radio. Your ring on my finger,
a single green stone, is alive
in the night, in the blue glow
of numbers above the stove. Still,
in the other present, we are paused
on the dorm-room couch of our first kiss:
you are twisting toward me,
and the years that make up the majority of my life
feel planets away:
a flicker of incredible distance
I breathe in
and it’s kin to when, yesterday, the drugs hit,
when you stared
from my reflection in the mirror
to my shirtless body, almost thirty,
your gaze a too-wide needle
stitching in vain, and you explained
that I was nowhere—
doubled, dispersed.
How can I forget how even
when you wrapped me in your arms,
this did not fix it. And this morning,
when I wake to the black hourglass
tattooed on your side,
still asking you, Have I returned?
please, answer me honestly.
Only you can see it, only you can know.
