• Our hands brush as delicately as two frail paper cranes
    On a chain with a thousand others,
    Made for a little girl diagnosed with leukemia,
    Parents crying on the hospital bed.
    Cleverly folded wings touch at the tips
    And, for a moment, feathers form
    On their brilliantly colored paper bodies,
    And they feel the strong muscles pumping their wings,
    Soaring gracefully through the air.
    My heart flies with the cranes,
    As our eyes meet, playful yet serious,
    Over cups of organic tea and shade-grown coffee,
    As we talk on the phone for hours,
    Connected again by tangled cords and wires,
    As we walk together, hands clasped,
    The forest around us in perfect stillness.
    Gradually, however, the disillusioned cranes
    Note the paper-thin fragility of their wings,
    Feel gravity calling them, demanding their return to Earth,
    As the air yields beneath them and they fall back to their chain,
    Dangling listlessly, only cleverly folded paper once more.
    So now I am alone, a simple human once more,
    After you left me, a pale note by my bedside,
    And though I remember the flights we once took,
    My feet are bound to the ground by chains of memories.