In the skywaves

Once I’m there and back again and then a few weeks later
I find the receipt in my desk and say, yeah, I went there, I remember that.
I saw a foreign couple take a picture in a phone booth and laugh, and when they glanced at me in the window, I looked away.
I didn’t want them to see me looking.
I wanted their smiles to be real
and to last
and to float on up above the grey sky to the blue one
to get a tan up there, buoyed by joy’s fight with gravity.
They deserve it. I think everyone deserves it.

I throw the receipt away and think of you.
You might take my picture in a phone booth, or you might say I’m being silly.
Either way I don’t care. Phone booth pictures are weird and phone booths are yucky anyway. The glass is all-nasty
and I don’t want to get any all-nasty on you
and I know you don’t want any all-nasty on you either. I squeeze your hand.

At any time you can say wait a minute and bend your knees to tighten your peter pan shoes and sprinkle some dust on me and pull me up into the clouds to sit on a huge red bean-bag bed in the moonlight, naming the stars and telling the stories that we’re saving for our kiddies. Or dogs.

I smile and tickle your knees and take your kisses and save them in my dimples for later.