Lullaby

Last night, I curled up around my telephone

and listened to the sound of you snoring.

It sounded like music,

like the metronome that clicks back and forth

but is never noticed alongside the concert pianist.

There are certain kinds of birds

that sing love songs to each other.

Their entire life brings love in,

invites it like an old friend for tea

and tiny sandwiches,

like old records that still carry classic songs

on their wrinkled faces,

like the soft-faced moon that pulls the tide in

and tucks in the beach at bedtime.

There is a reason my heart beats twice,

to let blood flow in, blood flow out;

once for you, once for me,

so that life might just be

without complications, without noise beneath street lamps

in a city that never sleeps, or crickets in grass

that might last for another year without being cut.

So many of so much, in so little.

And there are so many moments within one year,

each passing with tail lights flashing and flapping their

butterfly wings against the pitch black of true loneliness,

the ache of thousands of miles

between two halves of a whole,

but the greatest of these is the quiet hum

of the phone against my cheek

as the circuits pulse with your breath,

inhale, exhale,

your own symphony

of technology bowing to love,

allowing us to be together,

for me to hold you like a

Faberge egg in trembling fingers

like the treasure you are, love.

I have spent my life as an inquisitive child,

asking question after question after

what does it mean to be happy?

And you answered it all with your song,

with your trembling chords wrapped around my waist

and your notes left behind on my pillow to remind me to say

Lover, you bend me,

like a willow in the wind,

a pillow beneath my head.

You mend me,

like that time I busted my arm

and still wanted to clean

because your apartment is

so

fucking

dirty

but you killed my edge with,

“Baby.

Tomorrow.

Come to bed.”

I felt like warm air released

through nostrils into the night,

seeing life in shades of freedom

through your glasses on the nightstand.

You carry me within you

on my weakest legs,

in my poorest condition,

You bury your hands in my hair

and tell me over and over and over

so much in so little, so many times.

My words rarely find their rhymes,

my mind barely finds its sense,

but you found me,

you picked me up among the other shells

and put me up to your ear

to see if you could hear

the sea inside my soul,

or even just my voice.

I'm here, lover.

Let this be your lullaby.