And they are already laughing My love please don’t be afraid But there will come a day when field mice play In our empty sockets. When our bones Become homes for living creatures Other than our egos And when time jostles our skeletons Out of the composition that is me And you And will write with us love letters that spell… I owe you Eternity If we believe in life after death Then I often wonder why We assume the dead like coffins When people were never meant to live in boxes So I pray that our children have the good sense To leave us a little wiggle room Leave us exposed like stray dogs in a thunderstorm And I will hear the breeze but not know it as the breeze And I will feel the rain but not know it as the rain And I will behold the sky but not know it as the sky Instead I will hear the breeze and think it’s your love Returned into the hearth of my ears And I will feel the rain and think it is the pinprick of your kiss And when the rain is tender I will know that something has softened you And when the rain is violent I will know something has shaken you And in this newfound understanding without eyes or ears…or hands…or lips Our bare bones will make love in the dirt never knowing our nakedness Imagine! The wind coursing through a calligraphy of weeds. In our disrepair we have grown garden of ourselves Sprouts of curious grass shooting from my eye sockets Our knuckles, hard, smooth skipping stones Meant for child’s play And the devilish sun picking its way through your missing teeth And neither one of us can keep from smiling these days And the days go unnoticed And the nights go unslept And we talk with our souls Through the holes in our ribs Where organs once sat Imagine! Your skull and mine reduced to grins Both washed clean of our skins And our sins Growing young again Forgetting why we ever wrinkled Why we ever furrowed our brows With the plow of anger become Become dust with me Insignificant in every way I will love you Even after your marrow has become a whisper In your bones Nothing but a snickering of gravel Let us soak in these spaces Our shadows left behind Your skeleton laced with mine And I will tie your soles to my ankles And know what it’s like to step into a dream And you will try on my backbone And see how bad it hurt The day you said you were calling it quits I don’t remember why you left Or why you came back I don’t know how many years have passed Not really sure years passed at all All I know is the rain falls you kiss me Like a rainfall The sun it bleaches us clear and every day is a romance All this to say All this to say we are already laughing There is a wedding of earthworms and pebbles waiting When our tuxedo skeletons no longer fit There is a place for our faces to lie Planted beside forever smiling There is the place where we can be still And in love There exists a place where we can Still be in love Just two gentle skulls.