Will you be small?
Smaller than bones allow
Enough to see the scratch you’ve drawn between us for the chasm it is
to fall into
to lay fallen
to awaken sick amid dirt walls not painted in testimony but
as animal sounds gutturally spoken and painfully misheard
as a ladder that gives up before its highest rung is reached
as houses lit but not lived in

Will you concede that a body with a name can remain irreconcilable?
A stream bends in no two ways alike
But your bends arc through meadow
and bathe in sunlight
and run as water
While mine jag stubborn desert clay
and freeze in shadow
and glare at passersby

We are friends but when you sit beside me on this torn up couch
If you render your urge to speak into a distant stare
and see yourself age a year in every breath taken
and if you are angry but sit motionless
and if you are privy but stay confused
You can crawl into your skin until you fit beneath a delicate finger
The same that reached through some shitty wormhole
and extinguished her life
and killed our son
and left our home hollowed

These ups and downs are vibrations of near silence
and they are mine
and they are sacred
To be a friend is not a claim to hear them
only to be small