The first time I saw you it was 1:59am

but the time was wrong

A tree outside the window moving between wind and shadow

In the slanted light of late summer

You sparkled at the core

layered in colors of fuschia, orange, yellow

a deep, blue-ish purple

like a geode cut from some ancient and undiscovered ground

The first time I heard you, you sounded like a duck

I thought

God

She’s a duck

There are feathers below me

I could not stop shaking

in mechanics

of mutual violence and control

maybe someone else was shaking me

somewhere else

or the absence of someone else

somewhere else

The first time you came to me

I met you there, really there

Stunning, mellifluous, distant and dissonant

Your eyes were solid and knowing

and I cried and cried

my whole being a weeping gyroscope

but less elegant

following impulse from center to periphery,

less exact, less balanced

neck and jaw pumping, flowing over

vision drowning

legs still heavy and missing

You were you now and I was me

I was afraid I’d crush you in the quake

You didn’t seem to mind

The first time

I kept singing the lyrics to rabid bits of time

even after you’d been asleep for hours

“no one knows where we go...

when we’re dead and when we’re dreaming”

The first time you laughed

The first time you were lost

The first time you held on

All that was left protecting me

collapsed into the mountainside