My friend, we all got secrets—
yours, the red and blinking man
in your blue bed, on the floor, and mine,
that actions can tell, that words can strike
and scrape.

Once, you told me to become
stronger, a stone. “One day,” you said,
“You’ll rise.” Together, under
the onion moon, beside car and apartment and foxfire,
the sky blued to morning around us us. “Someday,”
I said, “You’ll know.”

                                    We woke up
in the heat, solid and clear-eyed,
our souls rising from our old bodies
like ghosts.