For my pilot, burning; a poem

I.

You shake the evenings

straight from the cliffs.

II.

From between shafts of dawn,

you answer only on exhales.

Thrusting your contrails wayward,

as if your own words do not want you.

As if all your surrounding air

is a series of orbitals,

negative on negative,

a constant pushing-away.

III.

The night before you open

your wrists

onto the bunker floor,

you call to tell me that

all skin is temporary.

Otherwise, you say,

we would walk around

shrouded in layers of electricity.

The tail-ends of promises, eel-like,

tucked like live grenades between our teeth.

To which I reply,

What is the color of a cloud

when you are trapped inside of it?

Your pulse is a wing

that will never cease

to thrash inside of me.

IV.

I don’t doubt that one day,

you will raise mountains

from the skin that slopes

between my collar bones.

From the echo of your voice,

unaccompanied, navigating the space

between my ribs.

Nor do I doubt that

you will let them fall:

Like the tyrants.

Like the aurora, bursting into fog.

Like the broken heart,

collapsing down its guttural trajectory.

Let the noon slip

through the holes in your hands.

Let the day shift, without protest.

You are a paper airplane,

destined for nose-dives,

and I am the clouds

waiting to catch you.

I will remember to pray for your contrails

if you promise to level

your sorrows in my palms.