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# If I Had My Way
- URL: https://www.andyposner.org/if-i-had-my-way/
- Published: 2022-11-24T18:47:51.000Z
- Updated: 2026-07-15T05:02:58.000Z
- Description: If I had my way, I suppose there would be no shorelines, no dying light sinking into bruised-blue lakes, no dead poets, no Libraries of Alexandria...
- Author: Andy
- Tags: poetry, #Migrated-1784090317409, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-07-15 04:39

In time this pebble, gathered from that beach  
which cuddles the curves of your body, would

have dissolved to sand. But I have gathered it,  
made of it an obelisk to my need for permanence,

the way I take things I love and tattoo them to  
my body: on my right shoulder, Lady Liberty

cradling a refugee; on my left, daffodils  
in front of a sunset we might watch, together,

drain from red to pink to black. I wonder: if  
we could pluck a star from the sky, place it

on our nightstand, would it be freed from  
a star’s fate? I finger the pebble’s curves,

touch its surface to my tongue. If I had my  
way, I suppose there would be no shorelines,

no dying light sinking into bruised-blue lakes, no  
dead poets, no Libraries of Alexandria. But when

I kiss these waters, an electric charge enters me  
like an eel and I don’t mind that I’m drowning.