Can you even begin to visualize
the tapioca pearls, hidden beneath the milky layers
of life's bubble tea,
the night light,
a firefly in the musky dimness behind doors slightly ajar,
the butterfly,
caught between closed, cupped palms,
warm? Imagine,
a second dimension, flat and rectangular, a page
out of my coloring book,
simple, thick outlines of delineation
of my face and yours and our joined hands.

What if we walked out, walked up and out instead of left and right,
landing ourselves in a cubed world, one of volume, of density-
Would we find ourselves
merely strips of rice paper, rippling in a new, wide-eyed wind
as two-D tears of shock
dribbled in blank, linear waves
down our cheek planes?
Would our voices, weak and quavering, form in jagged words
above our heads, speech bubbles written by your left hand,
then only balloons, drifting away into clouds?

Think then, we'd want to return to our own simple world,
of height and length and nothing else,
tacit understanding of each
star in the sky behind us,
each blade of straight grass before us.
And if we went back, if we ran away from three-D love,
(which we're more than likely to do in the end)
how would we ever taste the rare sweetness
of seeing my hand over yours,
your fingers intertwined with mine, pressing gently,
a single beating heart
instead of raw, ugly jumbles of confused lines and
unsure curves- that dismal sight
of flat palm in flat, coloring book palm?