You’ve untangled yourself from my hair,
floating behind me on one very thin strand.

So I loose you to the early air, not wanting teething
or sleepless nights, hoping you’ll find your way

at a young age. So—little enthusiast, full
of possibilities—don’t die. Photosynthesize.

Grow your own green leaf or several. Bleed
oxygen for my breathing. Absorb my CO2:

together we may balance the atmosphere.
Drop a seed into the humus of told thoughts.

Offer a nipple for a neighbor’s thirst
or a flake of desert manna with a honey sweetness.

Oh, small particulate of the mind, why not
turn to lightning in a bug that signals, Stop. Go.

Start a blaze hot as fatwood. Fling
a glitter of ash over the ocean, pocking it like rain.

Ignite a burning bush. Transfix the universe. Then,
having found a mind of your own, come home.

Burrow my brain. Be one of a neuron couplet
that breeds a host of your own kind.