Faith
When I’m on my knees
I want to see what I’m praying for.
With my eyes closed,
I can’t see anything
but I am lying on a couch
dreaming dreams
of AM radios, country roads,
reunited love with a girl
from a far away place
where we held hands,
kissed with mouths open
in hotel rooms,
on park benches
in the dark
when no one was looking.
Everything decays,
the moon, the ocean,
the flowers I bought you,
the vegetables I picked
from your mother’s garden,
and someday me, and you,
and everyone we ever knew.
But tonight, I am drifting
paper airplanes out an open window
encrypted with secret messages
only you’ll understand,
and the drawing of a rose,
painted the color as your eyes,
defying logic, gravity,
all in the name of hope.
Rewind
I want to go back
to 1997. The afternoon
of Saturday August 16th,
when you showed up
on my front doorstep -
a pack of matches
in your pocket
and a knapsack
cutting into your sunburnt shoulders.
And this time, instead of
running home scared,
I would stay to watch
things melt, and burn
some things of my own,
watching them float up
and evaporate soundlessly
into a blue summer sky.
Biography: Tyler Bigney was born, and raised in Nova Scotia, Canada. His writing has appeared in Pearl, Poetry New Zealand, Iodine, The Meadow, and the Ottawa Arts Review, among others.
