I lock eyes with the old lady on the subway. They beam the same deep blue as the cold sky outside, and have this powerful calm, like waves patiently shaping the rocky coast of my dark brown gaze.

They are so sharp that they cut the busy air around us into this random moment of shared defiance against made up urban walls, and inside, we see each other bare.

She has fallen madly in love, had her heart broken, and broken some. Received the best news on the phone—and the worst. Hurt people in ways they could forgive, but never forget. Laughed until she couldn’t breathe anymore, and met with many for the last time, without knowing. Lived many different lives.

Me too. But she has more, way more. Inside.

In that brief moment, no clocks ticked, and there was no one else, nothing else, and our eyes settled on a deep agreement.

“There’s no tomorrow. You have to do it now.”

(Born together and separated by a wall built by ourselves).

It began as an abstraction, and was reified by the evolving, rich separation— as slowly, and definitively as the frogs who boiled in water.

On each side, a caricature of the other. Uncomplicated, familiar. Nostalgic. A lifeless agglomeration of mostly resentments.

Sometimes they bring down the wall, temporarily, and finally reunite.

They wear the caricatures as masks, which feel comfortable, but dampen the ears, cover the eyes, and press the nostrils shut.

And as time runs out, they work together to put the wall back up, and over the wall, hand back their masks, to then—in quiet—slightly retouch the caricatures.

Absorb the discomfort of distilled inadequacy and essential pain, to then, sediment the hug you didn’t want to let go of, and layer the kiss you gave without knowing for sure, on top, like a wild mollusk which, in defending itself, is forced to

become

an artist, happily confined to the solitude of the shell, enacting the holy process of creation; manifesting beauty in the object, and happening upon the ultimate purpose in the process.

Summer pierces my window blinds and paints your ivory body like a cheetah, as your nails shred my bronze, wet skin, to reveal what’s underneath it all.

The philosophers declared: We can’t really choose what we want.

Passion, wearing a robe crafted by goddesses, of an unimaginable fire-orange color, etches treasure maps in my mind, while

Reason, in dirty rags, shackled by the ankle at birth, observes, imagines grain by grain, shaping a sand castle of luck.

To fall after fall, not fearing fear, stumbling through a uniquely crooked path drawn on the beach, walk the walk towards the End.

We found each other lost, and made a pact: You would channel nature through my body, conjuring shapes to inspire blackbirds to sing their evening chorus, if I could offer you to the skies.

In our balance of lead and follow, I surrendered you up high, and your color darkened the orange-pink sunset into the cautious storm we felt inside. You unleashed your untamed, wild hair, and time didn’t matter anymore.

I played primal notes as slow rain massaged our souls. Lightning struck and thunder echoed as our reward, and in a calm tornado of touches, kisses and smells, we absorbed it with every sense we could find.

Our colors and hair intertwined like thirsty vines, and I plunged head first into your eyes. And as you asked: “can you feel what I feel?”. I realized—there was no more “you” or “I”, only green.

Deep, like the idea of seeing our planet from above for the first time, in the vastness of your gaze.

Overwhelming, like the comet sky that cast all other colors back to the void before God commanded light into being.

Brief, like a river ride on a boat we didn’t have time to name.

The heavy armor that I worked so hard on growing, piece by piece, afraid of drawing blood and showing weakness, makes the touch less intense and numbs the butterflies in my guts.

I can’t feel pain(fully), and that hurts the most.

I taste bliss on the tip of the tongue, from another room, through a curtain; Like a mere spectator of a Doppelgänger playing my part.

Strip me naked, let me play, and bleed.

Aether clouds collided with her neurons and stormed a beautiful pattern. Some fibers contracted, others relaxed, playing a symphony of motion towards the bones.

She jumped. (the audience gasped) Eyes open, head straight, no net, not knowing if she would make it.

Thundering down in the most divine pose, she broke Bread with emperors, fighters, lovers and dreamers. In a small village called

Courage.

                            What if I could           choose a leaf from the Tree of Destiny?               Crawl back through abstract twigs                      which barely hold weight,                   reach a branch (still tenuous)       feel the sap pulsing upwards under the skin leave breadcrumbs of possible futures along the way.                               Slide down                                 the trunk                             as birds chirp                               to the smell                            of wet ground.                    Be back to Now—the root.

As I look up to prepare for the journey, overwhelm robs my hands of their tension, and the map that I so carefully drew, slips through my fingers like sand, as I pause, and notice.

What a beautiful tree.

Lines somehow bring the flow of the river to my living room, where we

    float.

I—quick on my feet—make up lines, and make lines vibrate, to draw lines around your smiling eyes. Which along the lines that give you form, nurture my warm bones, and ground my soul, like a kite.