bestie


    Multiple hours cocooned in third-rate airplane seats,


    knees knocking into neighbors, arriving while my brother’s


    luggage was leaving, all I wanted was to sleep until someone


    old and distinguished handed me a diploma.


    The next morning sunlight was catching up with


    my sanity, hair raked back like crumbling leaves,


    carting bodies to the white home in the green,


    prepared to excavate for my college dinosaurs.


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    Breakfast has always seemed like an innocent meal,


    until the metaphorical bacon was fried and eaten


    and you arrived, almost by accident, a familiar stranger


    willing to dig and carry years of accidental accumulation—


    mostly books, The Republic of Poets and Tracy K. Smith


    and The Lord of the Rings and All the Light We Cannot See


    filling your waiting arms as I apologize profusely


    for the weight of my English degrees. You just smile.


    And then I’m rising from the basement and being


    ushered to the light at the end of the tunnel,


    a car more like a space shuttle or rocket than


    a traditional mode of transportation.


    And although it seems at odds with your gentle eyes


    and runaway black hair, you suddenly become an astronaut,


    catapulting us into the milky highway at eternal speeds


    that sear my eyes shut with the rapid contest against light.


    I always secretly wanted to traverse the solar skies with someone like you.