It’s a lonely night
then the day dawns and it’s still lonely
just that it’s morning now but nothing
else is different,

And I think of you (Whoever you are)
how your voice will whisper in
the shell of my ear like a
warm ghost
or a butterfly: “Oh darling, let’s
be adventurers.”
Won’t we? Won’t
we? With
telescope eyes and itching
fingers, we’ll spend days in a musty
library and memorise constellations
and I will lie on your lap
and you will smile down at me and
somehow I will know that I’m not
ugly to you, even though
I am to myself.

“Oh darling, let’s be adventurers;”
with butterfly nets and long prairie grass
Nothing around us for miles
and miles and miles
And it’s just you and me and there
aren’t even butterflies, just an
endless sky and the wind in
our hair and our clothes
and our bones and
you
&
me.

“Adventurers,” you laugh with your
finger tracing the blue vein in my
forearm
and I watch as the chemicals
slop in the tray, breathing in their
scent, breathing in the destruction that
will somehow make
the world a more beautiful place
and when you hang them out to dry
it’s us
but we’re like aliens in a foreign land and
you make it seem like we’ve been places and
seen things we’d never known existed.

“Let’s be,” I pause,
and you always finish my sentences,
“Adventurers.” (You ought to know by now.)
And I add on as an afterthought, “Darling”
And we both laugh because it feels strange
but sweet when we call each other something
so endearing
like we’re plucking on the capillaries in our hearts
and harp music is resonating from within our
chests
so you think for a moment and then you take my
hand and you say, 














I don’t know what you’ll say.
I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.








and I’m all out of words,
and it gnaws at
my soul like a wolf in the night
and the only word that comforts
me is German and I can’t pronounce it,
and I don’t know where you are.

If you could imagine my lips at your ear
like the beat of a hummingbird’s wings,
then,
Oh, darling, please let’s be adventurers.

And pick up your walking stick
pack your things
set forth with a smile on your face
and I’ll be waiting with a smile on mine
as I measure how the distance between
us closes by the shaking of my fingers
because it’s you and you’re near
and you’re close and you’re real
and you’re
adventuring
to where
I am waiting for you.