Always on my mine Joe

I was fourteen and you were fifteen
when you took aim and shot your arrow, penetrating
deeply into my body
and making it so
I could not continue
without you inside me.

In clumsy, masculine bodies we could barely control,
stumbling in the pulsing, tingling dark,
feeling our way around corners and obstacles
where we could barely breathe,
and where I went,
you sacrificed
and with a handsome smile, calmly followed.

In surroundings familiar to me but
strange to you,
we made the best
of it and painted
marks of war
on one another’s faces,
brothers-in-arms determined
to survive a tour of duty
in a place where our love
was foreign
and unusual.

Your scholarly transformation
was my education, and as you became wise and strong,
I learned
I could share my burden
and you, surprising even yourself, could carry
the weight of our world.

Now, when I think back to that town,
you are as much a part of it as I,
and as we walked away toward the fire-streaked sunset,
I asked,
and you said yes.

We are together the architects of this
great skyscraper
which at its highest point
touches the horizon
so that there is no distinguishable ending to one
or beginning to the other.