What could I tell them?

That behind the whirling curtain, “There’s a curtain. . . .”

All Em could say, after not letting me go (or go on) –

“What on Earth happened to your shoes, child?”

 

Before I met you: I loved dust; I gave up training Toto to speak;

Em squeezed my hand with every passing thunderbolt.

 

Do you see how we dress infinity in a bowtie?

 

Suspicions grew when Toto stopped aging. Eternal youth.

Em and Henry feared I had made some depraved pact.

We were all of us ever so grateful for your attentions:

You were a welcome cyclone.

 

You adore me. I am your door to happiness.

How do I tell you that behind the veil you lifted, “There’s another veil. . .”?

 

We rename the puppy every fifteen years: Toto, Bruno, Arlo.

We travel – dollar by happy dollar, we laud the wonders of this world.

 

Then the picnic on the shores of New Zealand,

“What’s a Chinese gooseberry?”

We shave our first kiwifruit –

 

I’m a girl in a white dress wearing glasses, with an Emerald City melting on my tongue.

 

That very night Toto-Bruno-Arlo wakes us, barking at thunder.

At curtains. . .whirling.

You get up but – “Leave it open,” I say.

“What is it?” You wipe my tear away.

 

“Husband, somewhere. . .(kiss).

Somewhere outside that window

We will find a man with a green flying balloon.

 

“And I want to live, to stop disappearing,

To settle and be with you and Arlo –

Wheresoever it lands, or

Never lands.”