We tried to be separate from each other,
To have our own bodies and breaths.
But your sun dawned in our shared heart.
Just as the shadow of the sun’s orb is always here,
The inside of my poem-shaped mask is held against
My face with enough glowing glue to include everyone.
My real face is the syllable’s inner light
Before it manifests as speech: tender, sentient body, protected.
It’s when the top leaf of a tree is the last to fall,
And its blood is the ink in a typewriter. The paper,
The child of another tree, changes from an autumn sunset
