"If I told you I was fine, would you believe me?"
No, he said in a hushed voice I could barely take as a whisper.
He told me that everyday when he asks if I'm okay he is waiting for me to tell him I'm doing great, He said that he knows I'm not fine because of the way I say it, "the sadness in your voice is so painful to hear, it could make my ears bleed and my heart stop beating."

brought to life
before my will

the day I was born
is not
a memory of mine

for this
I have to go
to stories told by others

family and friends
communities
   of the first second
some until this day
unknown to me

they knew me
long before I saw them

how can I have lived
so long
without memories
of my beginning?

       * *

slowly  carefully
as i might an ancient diary
still full of young dreams
and even  perhaps
the salt of young love

it hurts
to carry adolescent obstacles
given my age
and all those hateful skeptics
it hurts how they gleefully profane

yet settled dust is yet dust
i sit willing to love
amid my dust
i sit in ever deeper vasts of love
in existential sacrum wag
kindled crown and fullness breath of all the scents of varied forms of love

lighthouse toes inspire seas ancestors swam
lyric feet to message myth of travels won
my calves and shins  knees and thighs
  crawling climbing walking running jumping kicking at the start
physiologies of courage ****** ahead
as future unmade moulds invite
caress the bodied length intent provides

singing fingers scale my world in chords of gliding love
tips of arcing sensate dawns
diverse as nightsky suns

my palms divine an ever giving gift
no futures could unveil--
the toucher's touching touched
aligning novel insights  wordless as the womb of time:
perhaps a symbol flare could squint
and grant a vision of horizon's end--
another pleasure game
a bonsai love to soften age
another twisting meditation's emptiness in form
as motion stillness spaces words
to perfect pitches  tempos   sound
though all of which will never meet
and never meeting meet
as one

closing my eyes
I feel your lips
   close over me
   in firm embrace

close to your ears
I murmure
words of love

and then go on
to close my lips
   lovingly
all over yours

holding each other
    close
we close ourselves
to the rest of the world
   for a while

and open up
    to us

         * *