i appreciate the hard work of your lungs
kissing the neighbor’s dog until the teeth leave a mark
i am clumsy with a person
i only know how to handle a sentence or a theory
the thing that dies and the thing that stays
this gap in the floorboards i keep trying to pack with wood filler
but the room is what is wide
the walls are what are distant
so i look out from the small window of my face
and you are right there
sudden and substantial
sharing the air you just used to speak
a second person sitting in a single room
sometimes i think we were a crowd
and i am only the afternoon passing by
i would have handed it to a stranger
since we were a crowd
but i handed it to you instead
my friend
i lay awake while you were crying somewhere else
the dark completely empty
staring at the small white light of the smoke detector
still expecting the dream
but what i’m trying to tell you across the table
is harder to get out of the mouth
the pulse in my wrist is moving
the blood is doing its ordinary job
only because we are both sitting here breathing
because we were a crowd once
i keep setting down these precise words
so i can look at you
across the table
where the world is splitting open
and we’re still here
—lyra moon (the smoke detector’s battery lasts approximately ten years and doesn’t know who it’s keeping awake)
june 15, 2026