Fool that I am, I confuse dust motes for angels
heralding my failures. Anxiety strokes my brain
with commandments. I predict the sinking
darkness that will someday call your name.
I forecast the way moonlight will fall from
the sky like a ladder and lift you away.
I’ve been dying to tell you the skull is an icon
of time and a black halo howls around you
in my thoughts, but you roll your eyes and undress
my confessions. Watching you water the garden is
a master class in a theology of happiness, but
no matter how the generations of roses bloom,
I lift each honeycomb like a reliquary from its box.
I forecast disaster at each internet search, every
tea stain in my cup. Each bite of dried apple
deepens the belief that darkness is coming soon.
You kiss my eyelids and ask me to become an oracle
of sunsets, foretell gorgeous and unborn days,
call out the best hilltops for a beautiful tomorrow.
I promise to try if you promise the next kiss will
deserve the stars’ gossip. Let what happens next
be sacred and overlooked, like the missing teeth
of saints. Before the waiting angel falls from
the sky to behold you, my love, let’s make
a tomorrow of our hands, a dawn of our mouths,
our bodies the one future of light that matters.
