Our Arms Reach Back

its the first assigned poem for a new course I'm taking! Yippee! The assignment was to write a poem without a true end, one only about beginnings.

I found my secondhand lover again.

He stood on my porch, with his heart

and his hat in his hands.

I open up his fingers, clasped so tight.

Through paper and ink, swooping curves taunting

me with the memory of calluses on my cheek.

I place my own written replica within his palm.

How does one walk again? Can I stumble blindly? May we?

No 

comfort compares to the luxury of even the sweet cigarette smoke 

and huff of disdain escaping from his lips, intertwined. 

He still comes back again. Hat in his hands.

Hope hails onto my spine, double time,

as his shoulders brush mine. 

We stare ahead.

The question bubbles up from my throat, 

water from a spring