pterodactyl

We come to a complete stop.
At a red light.
We wear our arms like seat-belts
crossed for protecting our pilot lights*

I can't help but wonder how many airbags might deploy
if a meteor crashed headfirst and heavyset into this planet
and pancaked us eternally into this moment—
how our fossils would look confused;
funeral flowers on a wedding cake.

God is a middle child playing with his erector set.
Or God grew up, moved out of town, forgot about his erector set.

None of this matters.
We're both thinking it.

You grin with as much conviction as a dented automobile,
breaking the months of silence to say,
I miss you.

We can never fold these road maps back the way they came.

Somewhere existentially above this moment
there is an asterisk
that confirms
you—are here.

There was a younger version of me that you never got to meet,
he was here once
for a couple of decades he looked good in hydroplane,
his eyes—bigger than my belly,
so I drank my weight in promises
I knew would be hard to keep in good faith
I also knew an encyclopedia's worth of how it felt to lie to myself.
I did it for twenty-three years
until I finally let go of stupid and held on to reason.

At some age I turned to the skeletons in my closet
and I started asking for answers
and my mother, like a paperclip, used to tell me — she'd say,
Kiddo, you could sit in a room alone for hours
and you used to make up so much conversation.
I didn’t ever know who you were talking to
but I hope you know that just because they don't respond
doesn't mean they didn't get the message.

My mother kept her chest of hope upstairs, away from the living room.
She only opened it on the hallow end of October;
that's where she kept the blankets.

Shy, I kept my hope chest covered in a T-shirt
at the very least.
I never opened up.

I emptied my toy box of all its fiction, filled it with voices.
Deployed an army of rubber wrestlers, martial arts amphibians
and those inanimate toy soldiers with plastic parachutes attached
in search of the confidence I knew was supposed to belly-flop inside of me.

It hid, unfound for decades.
Until you entered.

Hawaiian domino effect, circus of chain reactions, avalanche of affirmation, chest-plate yielding gravity mouth speaking brightest anything forever night light, all apex, and eyelash and cheekbone.
You — from big island — broke me.
I opened like the dry side of an umbrella, kept my back turned for shielding you.
I showed up for love on time, like a subway train in echelon city
wanting these arms to feel less like turnstiles.

All my sign languages were in waves.
All my ceilings turned to skies. 
All my jitters packed into my hunger stomach.
Typing hyper with caffeinated hands
a swarm of nervous words bee-hiving in my butterfly chest.
Something like a hummingbird
when I finally drop your name like an alarm clock whisper
my lungs empty like cathedrals on the day after Christmas.

I brought the sermon to your Sundays,
you brought the choir to my masses.
We built a church around these esophagus bell towers.
Held ourselves up to the stained glass and showed off our light;

I swear I don't believe in a lot of things.
God knows. 
But, there's always a but, 
I believed we'd find a way.

'Cause you never judged my albatross mouth when I said things like,
Self deprecation is the new love.
You kissed me—
less like doorstop
more like lighthouse illuminating windmill.

You were a merry-go-round pivot decorated in Kona coffee beans, Christmas lights, cough syrup, paper mache pineapples, plastic dinosaur bones, a collection of worn-out Asics, board shorts, and a dubstep remix broadcast through the static of a blown-out rotary phone.

You were everything I could get my hands on—

A full-tilt action-packed kaleidoscope jungle
with blender tongue and volcano heart.
I looked good in your sad panda coat tails,
teaspoon swallowing my doubts
while you Tarzan my ability to breathe.
Gave me ocean view and weak knees.
Is that sea breeze in your aftermath or are there already tears in my happiness?

You came camouflage out of my blind spot dressed in magnet armor,
diving board and drum set.
We passionbent cymbals into cannonballs.

I found comfort between your breastplate and your shoulder blades,
where you held me like a promise
when all my wishing was for want
and all your wanting was for wishes

Granted,

I know that there were days when you couldn't help but wake up like gorilla speaking Pidgin
and I couldn't help but waking up like an abandoned highway with a chip on my shoulder—
some maps don't show this much detail—

Which is why I always came through for you like a well-lit citrus truck stop
pressed against the dusk in your moonlight life crisis.
We only saw stars.
From our moon base.
In bewilderment, in our hunger we learned
if you hold me to my vending machines you'll get what you pay for.

So here it is, the truth, as I currently know it—

I am standing in the middle of a you-shaped hole.
It is as wide as a promise crater.
We built it together.
It is not my favorite place to stand
but the exit strategies are made in the shape of a me that I have not yet constructed.
I had a lot of things planned.
I referred to things as ours
when I really meant please—

bury me in your time lapse.
When your emotional excavators dig through your sediment
they'll discover me.

I am a pterodactyl
with wings spread wide as potential
sky-diving toward forgiveness,
forever.

The truth is, I'm wingless.

We met at a stop sign.
Our paths crossed.

There's a lot of accidents at some intersections.
Maybe it's because that's not where those two roads were supposed to meet.

We can not time machine argue with the way things landed.

We were not an avoidable accident.
We were just two cars that really wanted to dance.

I don't know what I'm trying to say but I know when I mean it.

There's a tyrannosaurus rex cradled head-to-tail just behind my curator heart-
all fossil spine, monster teeth, jaw head, and piano hands.
His presence says a lot about the past.
There is an asterisk on the surface, 
above this moment, 
that confirms with absolute certainty

*something wicked awesome happened here.

10/02/2011