I call it renewal
a friendship vow, any vow
though I’m just as lost
as last time, in the playground
climbing green dinosaurs
to shouts of no, don’t, you’ll hurt
yourself but we didn’t, taking
photos of the dirt by the river
from the top. Held our jugs
like the Stanley Cup to declare
our air and crawled back down
through time and space to lumber
outward through the neighborhood
to eternity which is one warm drink
we have in our hands. To accomplish
nothing is something special. I have
felt the lukewarm heat of tongue last
longer than this. I waited years for
something extraordinary to occur.
In my memory we last eternal.
In my memory we are whole, sober,
on the cusp of happiness.
(originally published in The Los Angeles Review of Los Angeles, Summer 2019)