Window Ice

Give me all the cuts you’ve got stretching
out across your palms. I want our hands to
line up perfectly when they hold each other.
Go out to the woods across from the three
rusted silos, back on the old side of town, and
try to get the humming birds to notice you.
We’ll play video games among the mushrooms
in the fields, stabbing our crude plugs into the
stems of the oldest of them who stand taller than
most of the trees. It will put us through vivid
simulations of countless lives and deaths and
make us feel every second of it until we understand
what the bones in our fingers are actually made of.
Neither of us remember when this started, but every
time I find myself lost I wind up seeing you
running through the rising water, drinking in
the fake air we use to glide off the tops of
mountains. I want to come back here again sometime.
You say to me, leaning against my shoulder while
we watch the ice slowly envelope the window at
the front of the church. We wonder if the piano
still works, and I listen as you dust it off and start to play.
You never took a lesson in your life.