with your thousand colors—
brother, your puddle-dark oil-slick wit 
diffracts into broken wavelengths, 
and you become elemental, 
ROYGBIV cloud-cast, 
pure lens of water, 
atom by atom as Whitman knew 
for every atom belonging to me 
as good as belongs to you, 
forgiveness an oath 
unfurling from my stormy tongue 
pinned to the skin of earth, 
my sins against you 
settle into layers, into loam, 
into bones of your bones, 
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart) 
this love a bow composed of light 
and the arrow of a lone raindrop. 

Bio: Lana Hechtman Ayers