not to wake up next to you alone but to feel 

and know as skin alone knows 

your tug on my shoulder before snapping 

with your free hand a selfie of God alone 

on a dayglow sandbar we never imagined 

the orange closing of another day together 

not skin alone irradiating before an iPhone 

reflecting seconds as much as the tug 

that surprised me more than God does 

in this picture where a red hue runs through 

faces I know are ours because I saw God 

in a screen’s big red button and when 

heaven tugged on my shoulder I smiled 

into the voice that sounded kind 

and deliberate in the quick countdown 

undoing time when with your hand 

on my shoulder you tugged me closer 

to you so we’d both know why the sun 

felt and kept feeling before it sank 

alone in night’s rippling scarlet