a poem from last week's Nica trip

Eye-level

Flying home from your country

our plane is horizontal to the moon,

which has never happened to me before

in this way, feeling eye-level,

that something would kneel down for me

which was already almighty and placed

where it belonged,

but it makes me think of my knees

pressed against the floor of your church

out in the hottest, dustiest middle of

nowhere where I looked at you,

our eyes resting along the same horizontal plane,

and told you that you meant something,

and that your life was bigger than you

had been told it could be,

being so young and so hungry all the time,

which can make someone feel small.

Your name, which sounds like "honey"

said with a laugh or marbles in your mouth,

is sticking to me, even as the moon

flees from the window of this plane

and is not almighty enough to stick

around like you will,

or that moment when you wrapped arms

around my waist, I kissed your hair,

with my eyes falling across the perfect space

to see the glue hanging from your skirt pocket

and held you, nine-years-old,

so young and so hungry

that I felt less than a speck,

and very small.