You’re on your white couch, a map and kitten

combined into one thing in your lap,                                              

covering those thigh-scars that are tiny

as a hair’s whisper, but a whisper

that’s just a little less friendly 

than the night, and not nearly as shy.  



I took your poetry class when I was still shy,

when I took my seat like fleas take to kittens—

as quickly as you saw to me and made me a friend.  

We’d go out after class, the whole bar lapping

up your blonde and my red hair, the whispers

of women always in our wake because we made them tiny.



There was a poem I had to read aloud once, my voice tiny

and twenty; I loved that poem all the way from shy

until now.  That space is a Godfist of whispering

highways, squirming like roots or new kittens,

threatening to drop from that map to your lap.

Three summers ago we made the road our third friend,



you held that map Bible-tight, like the hand of a friend

you’d almost lost to a bad death, like your own tiny

hand.  We found Arizona in the middle of the sun; it lapped

at our faces like a dog who has gotten over shyness

and is willing to touch everything, even the face of a kitten.

We brought home an Arizona kitten orange as a sun-whisper,



something to calm your shouting heart to a gentle whisper.

This summer we got pulled back west—gravity is friendly

when we’re in my car, when we burn the miles, kitten-

curious, to find a new place where we don’t feel so tiny.  

We found it and sat around in it, put the place on like a shy

sundress and then laugh-stretched it out, comfortable as a mother-lap.



Back home, a new trip falls from your head to your lap

like a welcome rain.  When I think of you like this, a whisper

of that old poem starts in my head, starts out shy

then sings louder This is how I want to remember you, my friend.

You smiling there, the mug of coffee almost too hot, your sips tiny

and unhurried, your only worry what to name your next kitten.



You swore you’d never die, on your kitten’s head, the one in your lap;

but death can be tiny, can whisper in and drive itself around on all your veins, 

befriend those smooth roads of you, not nearly as shy.