Tag, you were it – Poem

Tag, you were it and photograph by: Erickson

I guide you,
like a child
teaching another a new game.
Finally, we are clay:
Who would have known
Our original wonder
Had been baking all along?

Warm winter nights
As full as summer days.
Before I memorized the wrinkles
around your eyes:
Braille poetry when you smile.
And so I became the sunrise,
to shine into our unknown for a while.

This is not an innocent love:
We fight for the oil 
that heats our haphazard house
into a home. 
But when I saw your face,
woven into the delicate dots
of your first snow…
The slight twists and turns you made,
as I was a rhythm within your dance?
You,
you were a rhythm in mine.

And so we performed
upon a dusted and creaking stage,
but this time taking turns dodging the
burning spotlight.
Hiding our hearts in the shade.

The applause churned to a ghost,
and the actors’ booze
spiraled them away.
Lonely
emergency exit signs,
glowing
separate corners,
illuminated the path where it lay.

And so in that old theatre,
I begged to see the craters of the moon;
shine through the broken cracks
and flaunt the historic impacts
of the people we thought we knew.

I guide you, and you guide me,
like a child,
down the smeared red-carpet, void of seats.
We took each other down the aisle,
Took each other to play, saying:

Take my hand.
This is not a dance.
Baby,
this is our first
and last time
in this room.

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