Scope (Meghan)

Scope

I’ve been alive for a little while--

You for longer, ambling on cobblestones and

gravel paths that coat your feet with cinders.

You wondered: when will walking feel like home

when Sun has circumscribed its name

around your shape so many times, and you

have circumvented hers when once you spoke

it hopefully, linked its sounds with yours.

It’s felt like forever but you never said forever

until forever felt like someplace you might be.

Those syllables aren’t strange, though I wonder

how we know that they are true: for-ev-er,

the length of time our human brains can chew

but not digest, bubble gum swallowed in second grade.

Someone told you it would stay there all your days,

and how are we to know any different? I picture you in ashes,

though you said you’d rather slip whole into the sea

as you are, or be buried without a wooden box.

I asked if I could hire someone to hoist you

overboard, someone to dig the grave.

You picture me in a black dress—not because it’s

tradition, because you simply know.

And though it’s only mind-forever, it feels like longer

if my burned-up body gets to mix with yours like

our living limbs intertwined in evening and at dawn.

I suppose it could be ghosts or God, whispering

Water and bloom, water and bloom,

and the hissing makes us sure our feet will step

in step until forever makes phantoms

of these early days of love.