No sharing

They taught me to share—

half the cookie crumbles for you,

half the ice cream melts in my outstretched hands.

Drive the plastic car around the block,

then hand me the keys for my joyride.

You play with the miniature menagerie for now

while I build a town out of Lincoln Logs,

wooden beams rising like Viking war ships.

Then switch, the zoo I let loose

as you build the huts into skyscrapers.

But now I play for keeps,

no take backs, no sharing.

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Not when it comes to you.

Twenty-one gun salute

Eternally tied to the oceans in you,

even if the seas drain. I’ll settle my boat

into her resting place in the new swath of land

like an ancient captain claiming the waters like God’s great flood.

I can wait until the skies dump enough

to lift my ship back into the blue-gray expanse,

cloud sailing. Sound the guns—

not a celebration of life lived, solemn ark funeral,

but a celebration of a love that digs into the dirt,

feet planted like redwoods that break

the atmosphere’s glass and grow into heaven.

No new captain of my heart—you gave me

a promise of countless seas—a single lifetime

is pocket change I’ll happily save

until we walk across oceans

again.

The undying lands await.