Slovenia you took me in with an embrace,
a reserved foreigner’s embrace,
a summer rain embrace.

You came to me in the same black that I was wearing.
Under the glow
of the same street light together,

“It is small here,
you will never get lost.”

When you weight your words with bronze statues of lovers in anguish
walking apart but close as hummingbird heartbeats do
(and not of guns and dead fascists)

I will allow you to crush me in your embrace.

Tomorrow you held my shoulders and you looked through a Blue Window for me.
See the pines in patches of soil made yearning by their poor stone brothers, and the pine is jealous and only 5 of them were in your Blue Window.

Now, sudden shivers, the light hits the pines pines pines pines pines!
The shade of their Golgotha shapes!
Trickles through your Blue Blue Blue Blue Window.

The rocks had been barren as in Malta (your little sister). We lie together on garigue limestone in uncomfortable ways and try to guess which rock knows the least war.

Forgive Malta (your little sister)
she remembers different textures and
her skin is puckered with limestone
outcroppings and you hide your
wounds with pine and she wears
them on flag poles and
on visible veins and
she asks you to hold
me as she holds me.

We have turned hostile to sober
nightime breezes, we
sit again, street lamp spilling wicker light onto your
concrete lap,

“We are small,
we need to look out for each other”