A Single Honest Thing

You say: I'm not prepared to drive another mile in this dark
with animals crossing the road
the way you stumble through the bedroom:
rubbing sleep from your eyes,
lifting your shirt to clean your glasses,
murmuring something about the library

So we get out and stretch and
I'd like to use a different word, of course, but let us be real
here and now:
those stars are completely
fucking
twinkling

we stretch, and climb some small hill,
a precarious pile of rocks,
and then we sit
a little apart, but near enough to touch
if it comes to that
up here on our mesa
in this non-metaphorical desert,
under these stars

stars shining,
honest to god,
earnestly

we lay flat, and feel the way
a person might feel
while laying flat on their back beneath
an omnipresent sky: vaguely moved,
non-specifically struck,

and there is quiet
and we think, together

with nothing to stop us
but ourselves,
here on this black stone

say to me one
single
honest
thing

and we each say together
nothing could be more difficult
or more beautiful

beautiful is a word I would never use
to describe a notion
back home
in the city

and perhaps then we touched
or perhaps not
but either way, I thought
what
the fuck
has the desert done to us?