Those were the longest nights of summer—
the small-town airplane hanger
used only for two-props spraying poison over
corn and wheat and us until November.
A new pilot, eighteen-year-old learner’s permit,
he sailed endless Kansas sky, much farther
than the fields barren of timber:
unclouded eyes and thoughtless, an explorer.
At sixteen, I’d never been kissed, his neighbor,
then I dissolved under his hands, darkness no longer
as our mouths crimped together like pie crusts in the larder.
Paula Abdul sang “I Need You,” and I wanted no other.
Too young to date, I asked permission of my mother,
who loved him because of my dead brother,
born a week apart from him and us in October.
His mother, weeping, walked the ER corridor to see her.
We’d fly over the fields, through the ether.
What youthful evening could be finer?
Our small lives filled fully, kernels of grain: our hunger
for more life beyond this and one another.
We’d land, then lie in his Dodge Caravan, naked upon the leather,
mapping our fragile ankles, spines, and necks with tender
kisses and the hands so grasping but still lighter
than the air, the plane, the summer.
He left in fall for college to become a preacher.
I write him a long, then longer letter.
I wait until October, crying harder.
I drive out once to the hangar. Nothing hovers.
