Body and world were never the place
for you to live in. There was climbing, though,

climbing not out of the body but out of world –
in the fork of the tree, so high up it seemed

you’d already got to the sky and I was gravity
in your shoes. I kept you upright by somehow

contriving to be the counterweight far below
as long as you swayed up there. And as your arm went up

mine sort of pistoned down. As your arm reached down
mine was slowly raised, Dodya, and you started back

towards earth with caution, a kind of guardianship
exercised by every nerve tensed for falling

in your body, and placed the sky-egg carefully
between your teeth; you placed it there so tenderly

and eased yourself down backwards as if you were
responsible for bringing down to safety

the rarest and most susceptible outer shell
of life’s longing for itself — so pristine and so sky-blue,

perfect, but for the faintest freckles of blood:
don’t fall, I shouted up to you, don’t fall, don’t fall . . .

Now you fall through time, if not through time and space;
and the darkened freckles survive, are everywhere.

They are on your hands, on mine. They are on your shoes.
They were on our mother’s wedding dress before you were born.