Free as in undisciplined, as in formless, uncontained. For, meaning intended, the betrothal of cause to effect. All as in “may all beings know peace.” Yes, even him. And yes, even you.

Free from owning and ownership, take a penny leave a penny, dispossessed peoples of an anarchist moon. For you, this gift of grief, this rotten jar of gritty roots, to soften and soothe. All, like the radical unexceptional acceptance of newborns and the dying.

Free like the poem that saved you, like the text that stopped you. For, as in the fellowship of reconciliation, love revealed and interpreted by forgiveness from sin. All, meaning the sum, the just and unjust, the sun abandoning none.

Free as a story, a you-shaped seat at this table of laughter. For as in due to, as in what we owe each other, which is everything. All as in everyone’s invited, barking carnival cattle dogs herding you precious to the hearth of the heart.

Free just like “I made you some tea,” like my hand is held by yours as my freedom is wrapped up in yours. For, which asks: how long must we wait? All like many, meaning pluralistic pluperfect presence, the indivisible prime number of universal personhood.

Free, meaning not alone, all patches in the quilt and threads in the sweater and holes in the net. For we know not the miles between this world and the new one. All like one, which is what we are, which is all there is which is neither yes nor no but both and and.

Free meaning decriminalized liberty, bound and bonded to brother-sister-siblinghood for the why which is and cannot be anything but love and love and the inexpressible unbounded inequivalent irreplaceability

of all.

I was trying to save time. I ate
the canned soup. I bought my panic in bulk.
I outran the moon, she couldn’t keep up.
I doubled my body. We worked as a pair.
We velcro’d our sneakers. We cut our own hair.

While frothing the solvent of business and pleasure,
I got pulled over for texting and driving,
pausing the mindfulness podcast on 2x speed.

“Sir,
    you need
        to slow down

            Now.”

I’m trying to make time. I’m
      s  t  r  e  t  c  h  i  n  g
a minute
      like a ham hock in greens.
I’m walking.
    I’m talking.
I’m reading out loud. Stepping
      out of the office
        and into the river (there is
only one). Steeping
mint that I swiped
    from the Garden of Eden.
Folding the batter
    of motion
      and stillness.

      It’s three minutes
    to midnight:
do you know where your breath is right

            Now?

How many heartbeats escape your attention?
    The space in between them:
      does that count as

            Death?

I made some time,
for you.
Here,
take it.
Open the box
    that contains a box
      that contains a box
        that contains a box
          that contains
your candle,
lit at both ends.

      Blow it out.

        Breathe it in.

          Now,
            cough.