skyline

i'd like to tell my body a thing or two
about what it's like out there,
and to calm the fuck down.

no use rushing the legs through
the snarl of supermarket carts.
no point pushing the arms
through the rigors of the bench press.

my heart's not any more alive
when it's racing.

and because it's so easy to forget
the slow, perilous steps we took
to arrive where this moment finds us,
to know the length of patience
embedded in each footfall,
the stretch of daring necessary in our hearts,
because it feels so ludicrious to celebrate
any of yesterday's timid impulses, the strange wonder
of one hand reaching toward another,

because of this i will rise from all my bench pressing,
the silly tangos in the grocery aisle,
the day's small, palpitating emergencies,
and watch the light dip toward its own disappearance.
And then I will memorize the skyline
with my fingertips.