last day in Louisville

you’re carrying flyers & posting them on every door,
paper lanterns hanging from makeshift, temporary clotheslines.

there is so much to love—you teach me this. a mouse
will make its home in our walls & we consider ourselves lucky.

& you are too short to make much of a difference: there’s always something
too large for us to handle ourselves yet there you are, biting at the ankle.

we could have loved this city, could have lived somewhere
in the foothills a few miles outside of town, but there is something
that calls us home & so we return to where we belong.

& i am speechless when you teach me how loud a bird call can be,
how there is bliss in what we don’t say, how to marvel in
the things that we will never know—speechless when you show me

your entire life story through the metaphor of a bird that once flew over us
& so i’m with you when they start carving a canvas for mourning doves.
tattoo ink that is speechless with so much to want; speechless in the way you say

joy, wonder, love & mean it. it’s nice, it’s sweet, it’s as hot as Kentucky,
a stick that lingers on the skin. it’s a touch & God, how i would watch you
grow wings, see as you change in front of me. watch as you are

calm & gentle, outspoken but rational, strong but soft, simple & pure.