Bloom in Reverse

Earth, Hair, Fire, Water

61 eaRtH, HaiR, fiRe, wateR Though we didn’t kiss or touch each other, though we kept a good six feet between us, six parallel lines in an I Ching hexagram that could never intersect, though you looked at me like we were two bodies huddled together on a dock at a lake in mid-October, my back to your chest, arms around me like wind over water, those six feet, the water level in a well that neither lowers nor rises is not us, but is. Is me leaning on the counter at the glass shop, is you buying the fragile blue globe, is us talking about the salesclerk in the short skirt and high heels, the best we could do without saying us or we or wear that for me someday. And because we didn’t say it, or because it was between the lines, the upper trigram, which was water, 62 at that moment transformed into thunder, and my hair, tangled from our walk in early March wind, skimmed the candle on the counter, sizzled first and then ignited into an orange ball at the side of my head. It was then the well in you of never-changing water suddenly rose to capacity, swelled and broke the six-feet barrier, my hair, your hands, our bodies the reverse of our heads— out, smolder, flame, blaze, until you and I became one dangerous interlocking entity, the kind of we where the things that were most apparent, below and behind and beyond the counter, for one brief, spectacular moment flashed in our minds, then burned out. ...