All I Have to Offer

By Hio Fae

 

All I have to offer

 

Are some borrowed words, a grey shirt, butterfly wings left on my porch— next

to the recycling bin. Maybe some dates,

oats, chili flakes for your apples, the finest tap water.

 

All I have

 

Are translations of animal tracks that still linger in sentences, abandoned buildings, tire marks, fossils, cut down forests like glitter on your face after penguins

claimed the vortex, after you spilled beer at the club, after

 

All I have are alterations of my mind that seek to communicate more than my eyes ever could. I don’t think my fingers do enough. I still don’t know how to play

the piano, read your skin like braille, braid hair….

 

All I have are translations that metamorphose my thoughts that seek to know

what every philosopher contemplated over the dinner table, what a T-rex feared, what it was like to live in Paris in the 19th century, even though I do not know what to say to you.

 

All I want

 

is to just be friends, only for a little while,

while you grow in front of me like sunflowers

 

All dreaming