When Man Discovered He Could Invisibly Deliver Moving

My arms felt like arms.  My arms felt like arms

or a new category of response to beauty & the air

was invisible with invisible snow which meant

it was like a picture with the sound turned down,

a rushing kind of music we strained to hear.

We weren’t standing together in a room surrounded

by broken instruments.  We were standing in February

on the street between her car & mine but we stood

together & I was falling apart & she was maybe

falling apart & we held each other like we meant it

forever & knew it was just a breath upon leaving.

There was something moving.  There was a clamor

in my heart like the distant light of dead stars.

I’m dodging this sentiment with words to keep

from crying out. I am not a Poet & this is not

a Poem. There were ghosts running through my veins

& my eyes woke up searching the sky for birds that

weren’t there.  The something moving was my face

toward her or her face toward me & neither of us spun

ourselves away from our bodies or both of us did & hung

suspended in the ether before reentry.  We wanted

plummet & burn.  I fell & discovered fire & got excited.

I gladly broke up all the flammable objects in reach.

Now there’s nothing left to burn.  Everything must go,

dim hazards blinking roadside when we kissed in orange

strobe while the snow didn’t churn the air & I didn’t say

“I am invisibly moving” so instead I had to go.  I stopped

being the person whose lips had never touched hers.

I had to go because the old versions of ourselves

were busted up & useless.  The lines of the poem

with which we intended to save ourselves were paced out,

a glacial ode to the deep burn of smiling at an invisible

flower.  I discovered that things you can’t see can be

moving so I crushed them to my chest to make myself

shake & then burst.  There weren’t enough kinds of damage.

I also discovered I could send these things out so I started

throwing off sparks in every direction.  I was holding it

together & then let it all go in the hope that I’d be set free.