I met a man in the mountains
on the side of a dirty road.

Cigarette butts, empty chip bags, 
a used needle, old water bottles,
pieces of tires and chunks of asphalt,
butterflies: alive and dead–
markers of the map we made.

Dwarfed by jagged peaks, our paths
intertwined a hair’s breadth
from heaven.

They separated back on solid ground.
To remain,
(like so many things)
unexplored.