Laura Marcoux

why you chose to tie your life strings
to a person already married
to the wind is something I'll never try to understand.

I'll only try as I have since that day
that the wind blew me right into your net 
and we locked eyes for the first time - 
to explore the farthest corners of the sky
while you hold us both in contact with the ground.

you know how sometimes
when you hold me
my instinct is to let go of the structure
of my body and become loose and limp 
in your arms, well
there's something in me that becomes light
enough to blow in the wind
with your strings attached to me like a kite and I wonder:

is a kite still a kite without the wind? I hope
to never find out.

after I spent a year in grad school weighing myself down
to a plan I thought would make us happy or
at least stable and you
had to remind me that a stable
is a barn, which can just as easily
be blown away as anything else.

and maybe you do like sailing after all but you wish
I wouldn't make you admit it.

sometimes I ask you if you'll join me in the sky and
even though you are afraid of heights you have never
been afraid to fly
with me into the unknown, you know
how gentle the clouds are up close.

I think about how once or twice before me
the wind came and ripped your ground up
away without warning and you
had to learn so early and so quickly
how to become the ground and I
can only marvel at how you knew
not to look for the ground outside you and instead
you built it from the inside out.

when doctors look at your bones
they must consider extending the range of bone density from zero to Ryan Marcoux and they think
perhaps this body could use more
light - did I ever tell you that was my first word?
I didn't have to tell you for you to know it because 
you knew I must be light
to be married to the wind.

one of the most heart-breaking things I can think of
is that you and I will never see
the same rainbow.

in order to mend my heart, I'll sew together this promise
to never stop describing my intimate view
of the rainbows for you - 
how the arc is narrow with urgency or 
wide with softness and
how the absence of light is the only way to know
the deepest of indigos and rainbows 
teach me to be desperate 
in love, the way you love something that is fleeting
which is possibly the bravest, most open-hearted 
way to love because everything
is fleeting.

I remember that time I found you
crying alone in the bathroom because Purple
our cat was gone and you
had to learn so early and so quickly
that not even you can keep the ground from changing and now 
we cry together
when our plants die
and everything is more beautiful
because it is fleeting.

yes, everything changes
with the wind and we
have learned that one way to live
is to wrap our heart strings to the wind and
to each other and to search
for the deepest of indigos in the absence of color and
to love desperately rather than unconditionally
because unconditional love is a false promise - 
an escape route from loving
so fully that it rips you apart when
the arc of time narrows with urgency and
the death mother comes to remind us that everything
is fleeting, like the wind 
so hurry up and love as desperately as you know how to 
and promise to never stop describing
the vivid, intimate details
of the rainbows.