No sharing


    They taught me to share—


    half the cookie crumbles for you,


    half the ice cream melts in my outstretched hands.


    Drive the plastic car around the block,


    then hand me the keys for my joyride.


    You play with the miniature menagerie for now


    while I build a town out of Lincoln Logs,


    wooden beams rising like Viking war ships.


    Then switch, the zoo I let loose


    as you build the huts into skyscrapers.


    But now I play for keeps,


    no take backs, no sharing.


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    Not when it comes to you.


    Twenty-one gun salute


    Eternally tied to the oceans in you,


    even if the seas drain. I’ll settle my boat


    into her resting place in the new swath of land


    like an ancient captain claiming the waters like God’s great flood.


    I can wait until the skies dump enough


    to lift my ship back into the blue-gray expanse,


    cloud sailing. Sound the guns—


    not a celebration of life lived, solemn ark funeral,


    but a celebration of a love that digs into the dirt,


    feet planted like redwoods that break


    the atmosphere’s glass and grow into heaven.


    No new captain of my heart—you gave me


    a promise of countless seas—a single lifetime


    is pocket change I’ll happily save


    until we walk across oceans


    again.


    The undying lands await.