the treatment worked

I once had a wart on my hand
Between my thumb and index finger
The doctor froze it first until I was numb
Then burned so deeply
Into the crease of my palm
I could smell my skin smoking

You did the same
When you were so cold
I could not bear to feel for you
Then in a shocking but predictable twist
You burned me so successfully
I doubt you would recognize me anymore
Only a scar of the blemish you removed

The wart
By the way
Never came back

i thought about the beating of my heart

I thought about the beating of my heart
Until it became almost voluntary
Until I felt the need to tighten my chest
To push the blood through
Again
And again
And again
As though the mind could ever have
The strength and endurance
Of the heart

And I thought about
The spinning of the earth
And the ravenous, relentless
Center of the solar system
As it forcefully and without effort
Drags our world around itself
Again
And again
And again

And I thought lastly
About how I am as helpless to say to my heart, "beat"
As I am to say to the sun, "burn"
And I'm surprised I was not so humbled by this sooner

welcome distraction

It was an ordinary night
I could say of every time
The sun slipped behind the hills
And the sky draped its holy blanket
Over the towering evergreens
Letting in light where the fires burned through
And I often barely notice

If I didn't have you
I would spend more time looking at stars
I would be more familiar with the moon
As she takes her monthly breaths
I would pray to the spheres
And the satellites and the towers
That pulse with a red glow on the highway
And anything that would listen
That I could find precisely you

I almost missed you
In a million different ways but one

I owe everything
To that one way
In which we failed to drift
Obliviously past each other

backhanded compliment

Every cathedral
And temple
And shelter we build
To try to contain the Creator
Tells her that we must draw her
Away from something less
To the something better we have made

That we must harvest the trees
And pave the fields
And lay the foundation
And destroy her sanctuary
In an effort to hold her
And protect her
From the very elements she has made

We have
Since the beginning
Been gathering in our boxes
Bidding her in
While she
Since the beginning
Has been waiting in her sanctuary
Calling us out