The Partisan of Morning

The Partisan of Morning For Melissa The Earth is tired of our stories. The Blue Ridge knows this, maneuvering its shroud to hide its face. I’m trying to remember what we were doing before all of this happened, before you took the deepest breath I’d ever heard, as if for all of us who had forgotten to. I want you to get up. I want you to explain why one of us has to leave before the other, digesting vapor darker than the soil feeding the deepest roots of trees. There is a part of me that would sooner graft you, second skin, translucent phantom, the sutured stain of you like a drunken rose. It’s the only way I know how to keep you. The dead are entertainment. Tell me, where do we face to speak to them? When do we adhere to the guidelines written in our DNA, leading us to the mooring where our defective limbs heave and toss? Tell me, where do we put the fractured shadows of resin we collect, the two ropes made into one, the illusion of our lives? Do we hang it around our necks? Today, we can not offer each other answers, no more than we can offer a toast to the fallen, no more than I can bear hearing another syllable delivered from you, your legs hanging over mine like the sun. Because of our touching, I see your image in the ocean, rising, rising, rising. And the hair of the planet, a blood dimmed tide of scalp gleaming, lines our dirty feet, burdened by our discarded skin, our collections, our nebulas. Once, a dove brought forth to Noah proof that something beautiful and humane existed after annihilation. There’s still time, Dad says. I don’t know. You haven’t risen for a while. Yet there was a time, when I believed that only darkened clouds could block the sun. That was when you raised my hands and had me trap it. As if in prayer, I held that jewel, its glow like the hunger of a firefly, and turned my face towards you, smiling under the crochet of morning at the deliberateness of you, the flux of translation.