Starting a Fire

When you brought me back from the hospital
I saw you in flashes:
sitting on a chair,
eating too buttery quinoa,
turning on the microwave.

You were busy.

I was an otter
in an oil spill.
I slept and woke,
found you were gone

and slept again.
You woke me up
again much later when
you told me I was grumpy
and I laughed the whole way
home from the train
and found I needed to create
something pretty.

So I put up a tent
in my room and changed
the sheets on my futon
and strung Christmas lights
above our heads because
I couldn't quite get the stars
to come out on my apartment
ceiling.  You were tired
but loved the thought

and we slept under the sky
of my room, folded over
and under like a matchbook,
and it felt,
for an orange moment,
like we were the last
two people
on the coast
as the sun went down
on the world

forever.