Months before I met you, there was a night where you swore you saw God
there among the pine needles and deer trails of the forest
and you took an earring clamp up in his honor. You
stabbed it into your ear, letting the metal cut through that soft skin.
You wanted the world and the sun that dangled there to be a part of you
forever. You couldn’t wait for the wound to heal over, for that
brass metal to be a part of you, for the jingling of that
earring to be a permanent noise of your walking.
You told me later how right it felt, how wonderful it was
to have something like that be a part of you forever,
a symbol of something greater then it was.

I remember the first time I saw it.
It was that drunken night we met, I pressed you
against that dirty bar wall, wrapped my hands up in your hair
pressed my body against yours and breathed in the twin scents of
camp fire and cigarette smoke on your skin. I paused for a moment at your ear
I viewed the world and the sun dangling there, watched it glimmer
and glint in the bar room light. The wound was near closed then,
a small green slash around a brass clamp. And I shouted over
the music how majestic it looked and how wonderful it was
hanging there caught in the light, the little sun glowing.
And I bent down to your ear. I kissed the lobe there,
near the wound, my fingers tracing the world.