- There will come a day
when the fear of death
will be the favorite joke passed
amongst corpses
and they are already laughing.
My love,
please don't be afraid,
but there will come a day
when field mice play in our empty sockets,
when our bones become homes
for living creatures,
other than our egos
and when time will jostle our skeletons
out of a composition that is me
and you
and we'll write with us love letters
that spell I owe you eternity.
If we believe in life after death,
then I often wonder why we assume
the dead, like coffins,
when people were never meant to live
in boxes.
So, I pray our children will have the good sense
to leave us a little wiggle room.
Leave us exposed
like stray dogs in a thunderstorm.
Now, hear the breeze,
but not know it as the breeze.
I'll feel the rain
and not know it as the rain.
I will behold the sky
and not know it as the sky.
Instead,
I will hear the breeze
and think it is your laugh
returned to the hearth of my ear
and I will feel the rain
and think that it is the pinprick
of your kiss
and when the rain is tender,
I will know something has softened you
and when it is violent,
I will know something has shaken you
and in this new found understanding,
without eyes or ears or hands
or even lips,
our bare bones will make love in the dirt,
never knowing our nakedness.
Imagine,
imagine a rough wind
cursing through a calligraphy of weeds.
In our disrepair,
we have grown gardens of ourselves,
sprouts of curious grass shooting from our eye sockets.
Our knuckles hard, smooth,
skipping stones meant for child's play
in a devilish sun,
picking its way through your missing teeth
and neither one of us can keep from smiling these days
and the days go unnoticed
and the nights go unslept
and we talk.
We talk with our souls
through the holes in our ribs
where organs once sat.
Imagine.
Imagine your skull and mine,
both reduced to grins,
both washed clean of our skins
and our sins growing young again,
forgetting why we ever wrinkled
or why we ever furloughed our brow
with the plow of anger.
Become dust with me, my love,
insignificant and everywhere,
for I will love you
even after your marrow has become a whisper
and your bones,
nothing but the snickering of gravel.
Let us soak in the spaces
our shadows leave behind.
Your skeleton laced with mine.
I will tie your soul to my ankle
and know what it is like to step into a dream
and you,
you will try on my backbone
and see how bad it hurt the day you said
you were calling it quits.
I don't remember why you left
or why you came back.
I don't know how many years have passed.
Not really sure that years pass at all.
All I know is the rain falls.
You kiss me like a rainfall.
The sun,
it bleaches us clear
and every day is a romance.
So, all this to say,
we're already laughing.
There is a wedding of pebbles
and earthworms waiting.
When our tuxedo skeletons no longer fit,
there is space for our faces to lie
planted beside each other forever smiling.
There exists a place where we can still be in love.
I know it does.
There exists a place
we could be still
and in love,
just two gentle skulls.
(people clapping)