For Daniel on his 32nd Birthday

It is predawn
Dan, on your thirty second birthday
and I know that you are still sleeping
cocooned in last years thoughts
and today and what it brings can not yet touch you.
but I’m sleeping less and less these days
wondering how
we have survived
so many turns on this groaning planet

and it will be years end before we know it
and we will share another night
walking down Poplar Drive
in the cold mountain air
breathless at the sight of each other,
and the never-ending night sky.

I am still too liquid,
and you are too much fire.
Parts of me are sliding away, mutating, changing me into
something other than a woman.
And you flicker, in the pale light of fall, a bonfire of a man.
We are not solid, not of this earth,
our bones and tissue and muscle just sore illusions.
Beautiful and grotesque,
We are hanging somewhere else in that predawn sky.

Like a Gemini.
My twin.
How have we survived so far?
How has a suicide not romanced either of us?

You asked me once what other options there were
and I promise you, I still have no answer.

So that night in my apartment
after all the Spanish wine,
and your attempts to woo my tabby cat,
understanding and speaking to the wild in her
just as you do with everyone you meet
on that island of madness you live on,
I crowned you an untouchable.
My touchstone,
to which I have no choice but to return.
Zeus and Athena,
I can feel you inside the rattle of my ribcage

And we promise not to break each others hearts
but that is all we have been doing for centuries,
for this life
and the ones before it.
Thirty two in numerology means communication and balance
and in Chinese it means easy and live.

But I wonder how that can be? How can it ever be easy?
I’m throwing rune stones and lining my door with cheroot
cause even I know that this year,
as I raise my glass to you, my dearest friend
this year Daniel,
this thirty second year
will be a fight like all the rest.