If I were an anchor in a dark room alone with God I think I would have imagined what a lover would be like.

I would have thought of the curl of your lips like the crusts of bread– arrange your curly hair from the wooden planks of the floor– I could have imagined your eye brows by the arch of the door frame.

However, I could not fabricate the way you laugh like rain boots or that look you get when you’re thinking of something no one has a word for yet.

I could not know there would be a boy who could tilt his head like the lip of tea cup when he listens and like the corner of a snare drum when he remembers what everyone else forgot.

I could not know there would be a boy who was a minstrel and a pastry chef and a traveling salesmen of used poetry books.

I would hold myself at night alone with only my own lips and the bible. I would trace the holy spine of the book– pretending I could know that your spine is soft like the space between the rails of train tracks or rungs of fire

escapes.