palm/.

you were a scandalous mess and I thought that was the dream: long hair, an apartment, two shoes on two needy feet.

you were a beekeeper, entertained by the raging rivers rushing through your mother’s kitchen.

you were a cop-out backpacker’s castle of wailing red flags, and I held on to your inhaling and exhaling. I kept them in my wallet every year because i believed we’re all indebted to the chasms of one among seven freckled children, but you didn’t look up.

you asked me to endure the crumbling that centuries bring, the frustration of a growing flower, and the only time you were afraid was when I almost left with a valley-carving shepherd.

i sang to you a folk-song no one had ever written, and in return i found bloody knees and a stone with the inscription, “the birds wait for no one.”

climb and don’t come back, unless you’ve wept.