I cheer myself up by creating a system for getting things done.
I pull the pipe from your hand and fling it through the window.
I explain to you the difference between helping and taking
while you are unfolding yourself in my hand, an unfolding
that takes place nightly. Every night we talk about things that smell like the river.
Every morning we take and eat someone else’s eggs
in the few bright hours we are given. We remember the pavement
as the grave distance it has become, and it remembers us.
You bring me the juice before you put your glasses on.
I happily hand you the gladiolas. There is no give and take here,
there is no helping. He means transport; you want to take the heaviness
from your eyes and put it somewhere inside me. Take is another journey for us,
one whose destination is another heaviness that I will have to remove.
The removal must take place here in the darkness,
and we are both so tired of it being dark.
Giving is something that happens with everyone else; it is something
being set down gently with you in mind. Giving is the placement of a journey
or a gracious watering, the way one hand waters another in a dry spell.