Bucketfuls

for F------

We exchanged 12 messages before you led me down the stairs to your apartment by the church with rainbow steps, & this is how one gets Murder off of Tinder, but I trusted already the story you would tell me of your niece—three oceans away— who declared the ocean so vast as to contain “a whole bucketful” of water,—& how your walls would be painted with cosmos,—how the eyes of a deep space photographer could paint me with stars,

& you are the only person I’ve kissed only once—because your favorite band quoted my favorite poem, & you longed for the words between my lips as I recited my own, until you asked me if you could catch them in yours, & we strangers linked fingers until 2am, & your bookshelves were four rows of philosophy, & you aren’t religious, but you told me you get it anyway, & I suppose loneliness is a sort of religion on Seattle Tinder

because I remember your niece & your longing & the cement above our heads glistening from rain, but not if you ever said my name,—& because sharing a kiss knowing we’d never touch again felt like a sort of worship to how brief encounters make us exist always as echoes, as one whole ocean in a bucket in the memory of a stranger.