---
every poem, I write for you
and every tear drop is my offering
to the cruelest gods who made the world such a wide expanse
with oceans that divide lovers, mountains that claim lives
so I offer my heart, my hands, my small human body
pleadingly, to their appetites, and may they grant us salvation
from this life, and in the next,
may we find ourselves two seedlings in the ground
growing trees, rooted in quiet togetherness to the end
---
photo: Malibu beach, Pacific Coast Highway, june 2019