It came to my attention
one day
so late.
Over Irish Coffee -
heavy cream, whiskey,
sugar cubes, and company.
The name I have,
The name I'll keep,
may end with me.

These talks of kings and queens,
Lineage releasing despair
for a child to walk with a sword, to speak
spreading seas, birds and bees.
So it was written.
Our only deed.

Yet days wandered to years
as time disregarded love
and rambunctiousness wrestled and wronged
the avenues we could have called home.
Because why grow up as my stubble grows thick?

Memories remain,
callouses harden from the same, the same,
and I can't remember
a day, a November,
that I wasn't alone
wrapped in ecstasy of you.
Our permanence -
etched lines of physical signs -
only penciled.
And bruises always fade.

If ever the rust of perception
will clear,
the beating heart in this study
will bear
not just a name, or a poem on names,
but a reason to give in.

And the grin of a doting father
will replace the temporary harbors
dancing like pieces of a cookie cracked
whose fortune read exactly as dreamt.

And I sip and think of kings and queens.