Boy with a Coin

I tried to download Boy with a Coin. The richness, the layers, like chocolate would set a thick background for writing about you. But I settled on Ave Maria. You just dropped me off at the airport. On the way, we rode in silence, just Jay-Z did all the talking. It was early, not even daybreak. Now I sit here and wait for light to unblacken the sky and that soft blue before sunrise start like your yawns in the car, coming up from inside the rise of the lungs of the planet and stretching through the mouth. For a few precious moments, before the sun’s rays reach us, a lavender hue brushstrokes all of the sky. I have heard it good luck to birth your children between the two lights; daybreak and sunrise.

In the car you couldn’t stretch if you wanted to. Your 6’5” frame almost touches the ceiling as it is. The whole time we rode I thought about our question game last night and how I told you the worst secret about me. You know the most shameful truth of me and still your hand rested on my thigh with the same weight, same presence, same calm.

You truly love me. You carry no pretense. I imagine you at yoga today, sleeping, shockingly reprimanding Rube, calking my bathroom. You remind me of my grandfather’s bread, whole and filling, the taste of honey. You hold me close and gently, kissing the top of my head and laughing with me. You sit with me on kitchen counters late at night and think I am always beautiful. Wine in a paper cup and the smell of earth and wet leaves are my first memories of you. When I realize my body will return to that same earth I want you beside me.

If I am the boy, thoughts of you are my coin. Sleeping, I will dream of my spot, of your lips, closed-eye kisses, your lifegiving smile, your hand tracing the arch of my back, a slow yielding curve. Easy and natural, timeless. Just like us.