circles that make lines

I still wear the braided leather belt I got as a gift that year. It didn't fit me then, but now it is perfect. As if you could purchase what I would become.

I drink my coffee slowly in the morning, and it makes rings around the interior of the cup. Some thin and difficult to distinguish, others dark and rich. Like the rings of a tree, or around one of the gas giants. But we know these to be years, and ice. Mine are merely the amount of time spent with words.

I found the band in the garage, and since then it has moved from the coin pocket of my jeans to the dark, dusty surface of a desk, to the index finger on my right hand, and back again to my pocket. Those things we carry, whether or not we have them, it is so difficult to find their proper place.

I made a line in the dirt around the fire. The salt from the meats would seep into the earth and attract skunks. I didn't know it at the time. I only wanted to cook for you.

We slept among bees and arachnids, insects without proper names, things crawling out of the earth, and in this bed we made love quietly. And when the spider attacked my foot that morning, I waited to see if a red ring would appear on the skin.

We are both of us hurling through space, in orbit around the sun. I wonder if this might give us someplace to begin.