they carved their names into the body of the felled giant. a tunnel carved into its chest for folks to walk through and take pictures of themselves. love is sold to us like holiday cards. holidays weren't invented by the holiday card companies, love was, then the holidays followed.
so what is it there, what was it there when the two of us sat cradled in a spool of emotions projecting onto the screen of a camping tent. a darkness, the light and its resulting nausea, a disorienting space, the faces of upside down strippers working the pole branches with tasseled needles in the lunch buffet trees through the mesh window we had worked so hard to peel the polyester flaps back from. harlots emerging from the shapes in the pine cones to seduce me away from the sober aches. what was it then when the patient trees spun back into their ridiculous gradients and i snapped out of it and them. the way you laughed so hard the tears came and delivered you into full fledged sobs. what was it then.
into the cold creek pool for a cellular baptism, to demarcate the restlessness of passing days and us as aging creations. cut a hole in me, cut a hole in me, i am science i am an experiment in teaching a man to fail and then telling him he can't.
you said people either make it in the big city and stay, or they go back to their towns and have one or two kids. i wandered off, stood tall on a rock that gave way and pounded me down onto the forest floor.
what was it then, when we together ripped the core off ourselves and in an exhausted state, with no glory inside ourselves to speak of, found perfection.
