The Lucky Ones

I am warned against marrying

early love. I am also told

it works out, sometimes,

for saplings can be braided like hair.

We will bend and grow together

while the centuried oaks at Toomer’s Corner

hollow, and the college tree poisoner

brags on the radio. Your ring on my finger,

a single green stone, is alive

in the night, in the blue glow

of numbers above the stove. Still,

in the other present, we are paused

on the dorm-room couch of our first kiss:

you are twisting toward me,

and the years that make up the majority of my life

feel planets away:

a flicker of incredible distance

I breathe in

and it’s kin to when, yesterday, the drugs hit,

when you stared

from my reflection in the mirror

to my shirtless body, almost thirty,

your gaze a too-wide needle

stitching in vain, and you explained

that I was nowhere—

doubled, dispersed.

How can I forget how even

when you wrapped me in your arms,

this did not fix it. And this morning,

when I wake to the black hourglass

tattooed on your side,

still asking you, Have I returned?

please, answer me honestly.

Only you can see it, only you can know.