Passport

Painting by Alexei Nechytaylo

So this is what it feels like
to wake up in another country.
This is how the human heart
can ask passports to mind their own business.

When your fingers ran on the length of my spine,
and on the periphery of my existence like dry ice,
I could see what ‘teleporting’ might feel like,
twenty times a second, or more.

When people hug, I think it’s like someone
offering you a cup of warm coffee on a winter morning.
When people kiss, I think it is ‘thank you’.
So, thank you, for writing songs to my soul,
and thank you, for everything true and untrue,
for they are all going to end up in the same abyss,
aren’t they?

You know somewhere in the night, I cried.
And by choosing to tell you,
I’m choosing to hand all the question and exclamation marks
in the brackets of your hands.

To wherever the stars take you, and beyond,
may this remind you of me,
and may I remind you of how
it feels like to wake up in another country,
how the human heart can ask passports,
to mind their own business.