burst 

below the deck
we'd blow bubbles

billy with the 
yellow bottle
& me with the blue

divine &
dollar store scavenged

crouching on
the red metal doors to
the basement

wands to lips

each sphere a small
planet with orbits
& moons

whirling 
in wind chime gust 

sometimes we'd play 
a game where
you had to keep the
bubbles in the air

save them from busting
on the pavement or
our bodies

it always made me
feel volatile

like everything that
would ever touch me
was bound to rupture

slippery fingers 
wiped on our thighs

we'd play until 
the bottles of bubble-soap
were run empty

pouring the last remnants 
onto a dinner plate

making a circle with
our thumb & index finger 
to send off
the last minor stars 

i wonder if this is 
how god feels when he made
life all those years ago 

if he sat out
on the metal doors
to the cellar & opened
his mouth to blow 
souls into bodies

floating until we found gravity

are you a planet
or a star?

i think i'd like to be both

we've already established 
that worlds combust against
my fingers

on a night as clear
as this one i can 
look up & see all of them

they make a ring almost
like saturn

just outside the domain 
of clouds

all the bodies that
god has yet to breathe 

glossy twisted-rainbows 
pirouetting
inside the flesh 
of bubbles

do you ever 
find yourself with 
skin translucent & 
colorful-- eating 
bruised-peaches 
sunset?

& when all the bubbles
were popped 
we would sit
there a few minutes longer

mourning the hundreds of
citizens we watched

their brief lives 
stained on the cement

we should have
built headstones

hundreds of them

small & intricate

what if that's how
dying worked?

where ever you fall
god sends an angel 
to plant a headstone

thousands of rows 
up the street on the
hill that watches over town

revolutionary war soldiers

digging their skeletons 
into passing bubbles

knees tucked into
chests 

their skin is softer
than they remember it

drifting above
the roof tops 
on noble street

they sight see

trace empty maps 
on the back of their
own forearms 

before bursting 

somewhere around the 
old lutheran church steeple

my brother &
i aren't 
there to catch them