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.

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