reykjavík

Your soul reminds me of fort-building sleepovers
peanut butter and jelly smiles revealing
checkerboard mouths on a Saturday
sprinklers in June and scattered bottle caps
let’s collect them.
They’ve fallen at our feet, we can turn in a bag full
I think there’s great value in this bent metal

Enough to fill a swimming pool, they come like coins
spilling out effortlessly of this slot machine’s mouth
only one pull of the lever and now it just won’t slow
and I don’t want it to.
Carnival eyes stay open past midnight, glowing neon
we won the big stuffed lion, one they say you can’t win

I wonder if we stayed up late too often
sipping carbonated laughter and driving into dreams
we never met a distance our legs couldn’t jump
so we kept jumping.
Hopscotch conversations into the cavernous nights
must have led to this sluggish sickness, this bruising aliment

I’m glad I could be your handkerchief
to smear the sticky, salty mucous from your wet face
and when you coughed up that bright color one night
I caught it.
Still, your flickering light shone through and then it bent
scattering into the most precious array on the ceiling

We emptied the medicine box, turned it upside down
but these placebo pills and styrofoam tablets don’t heal
perhaps a foreign leaf or scarce root can be ground?
I’ll start a search.
With violin fingers I will make a salve for your heart
so your accordion lungs can breathe music once again