bestie

  Multiple hours cocooned in third-rate airplane seats,

  knees knocking into neighbors, arriving while my brother’s

  luggage was leaving, all I wanted was to sleep until someone

  old and distinguished handed me a diploma.

  The next morning sunlight was catching up with

  my sanity, hair raked back like crumbling leaves,

  carting bodies to the white home in the green,

  prepared to excavate for my college dinosaurs.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Breakfast has always seemed like an innocent meal,

  until the metaphorical bacon was fried and eaten

  and you arrived, almost by accident, a familiar stranger

  willing to dig and carry years of accidental accumulation—

  mostly books, The Republic of Poets and Tracy K. Smith

  and The Lord of the Rings and All the Light We Cannot See

  filling your waiting arms as I apologize profusely

  for the weight of my English degrees. You just smile.

  And then I’m rising from the basement and being

  ushered to the light at the end of the tunnel,

  a car more like a space shuttle or rocket than

  a traditional mode of transportation.

  And although it seems at odds with your gentle eyes

  and runaway black hair, you suddenly become an astronaut,

  catapulting us into the milky highway at eternal speeds

  that sear my eyes shut with the rapid contest against light.

  I always secretly wanted to traverse the solar skies with someone like you.