In reverse

By volunteering a solution
I learn to write my name in reverse,
if only to comfort you from the vast
fog that surrounds us, indelible, inchoate;
I bottle this in a solemn emerald vial
to hang around my neck as a hangman’s noose.
So you may walk a little smoother
down a princessed path paved in primroses,
I sprint ahead to cross this damaged path
(you never saw the pebbles I picked before your
retinue and flung leftward from my shoulder,
into parasitic fern, twisted prickly gold
so nothing shows, except your glittering vision).
In accepting this solution you learn
to write my name in reverse, vomitting
awkward curves churning long into the morning.
Always, no matter your guise or shape,
you meant more to me than I to you.
And these are the saddest lines that
I write tonight: however infinite,
our lines, so truly parallel, will never meet.
Whatever happens with us, half-blotted into half-night,
should I lose the heart to patter on padded feet,
should I cling to the moss clinging to your heels,
your dainty red shoes will haunt mine,
excepting the rule of two, indigoed and mauved
from the twilight, solely a notion in this salt-stained weather.

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