Carmen Butcher

A Sequence of Peace
Peace has no borders. -Yitzhak Rabin

Together we entered some buried…Mind the Gap--stand clear of the
doors…walking, falling state holding finger-greasy silver carousel or prison
bars to seats angled far from others and as strangers sat opposite each other and
stared while a rushing past on my right made me know we were moving
somewhere fast. You were a fine Saville Row suit.

At the White Hart that night in an old room loving dust and antiquated cinema
seats with stuffing laughing through plastic tears we both saw under the monk's
robe he wore his masculinity most medievally but we were too shy to say this
until a few months later when the golden bands talked of monster stories
masterfully told, and we ate this holy modesty loudly, tears dancing off our
naked smiles.

A Fulbright scholar intimate with Bosworth-Toller, I had never asked a boy out
before (growing up in red dirt); however, the White Hart was my phone call.
Not many of the 7,000,000 were there, but we were. Maybe 4 others? All of
New York should've been there taking notes.

Your fingers were one state, and mine another. At Dangerous Liaisons--the
play--your call--15 solicitor-pounds each--you simply took my hand. I lifted
my feet off the floor, yelled, "Yippeee" and "YEEEE-haaa!" and crossed over
into Florida for a Dixie cup of orange juice and the wide openness of the sea.

Sing, lonely cowherd, of that hungriest first commitment: Nu sculon
herigean heofonrices Weard, Meotodes meahte ond his modgetanc, weorc
Wuldorfæder, swa he wundra gehwæs, ece Drihten, or onstealde. He ærest
sceop eortan bearnum, heofen to hrofe, halig Scyppend. tha middangeard,
monncynnes Weard, ece Drihten, æfter teodo, firum foldan, Frea ælmihtig.