MIDAIR
Penises float in bathwater,
did you know that?
I didn't, until God gave me three of them,
to scrub around the rims and dry
with hooded dragon towels.
Dreams float in midair for years,
did you know that?
I didn't, until God pulled me underground
to mother children,
to a system of tunnels between grocery stores
and delivery rooms
and bunk beds
and potty seats
and my side of the bed.
Today I pushed my face into the wind
as it was blowing by my 12th-floor window,
and floating in the fumes of frying dinners,
was the smell of my parents' backyard,
in the early evening,
in the early Spring,
when I was just old enough to worry them
but not old enough to want to be anywhere else.
I found myself, at that moment,
looking out into the pink-gray sky
beyond old mountains sprinkled with temples,
and down over huddled rooftops,
begging the world, through my tears, to wait for me.
"I'll be back!" I cried out into the wind.
"Promise me there will still be things like warm rain
when I come up out of these tunnels.
Promise me that snowflakes will still melt on my cheeks,
and water flowing over rocks
will still make the same sound."
"Save some for me!" I shouted, but my voice was lost
in the wind,
heard not but by, perhaps, a bird,
or an old man's kite,
or the scraps from a neighbor's rice bowl
scraped out into the evening from the 13th floor.
"Save some for me!"
