Your photo still comes up on my phone sometimes-- do I want to talk to you?
Well of course I do.
But I'm not sure the person I used to talk to so candidly even exists anymore.

I've had a lot of people vanish behind their own eyes,
Victims, lost causes, lost and never found-
Send out the search lights and dredge the lakes:
They aren't coming back home.
I've known a lot of vanished, lonely souls
People who give up the good fight and jump from the bridges of their ribcages
And fall.

And Fall.

They hollow out, shallow and craven,
Just the skin and bones of something that used to be
A universe
But was too afraid.

You don't have to be God's favorite
To dive from heaven.
Not when you carry it within your kindness
Not when your words are light
And your fingers make piano keys ache for them.
You can fall
With your feet on the ground, my friend.
You can cast off grace because
It's just too hard to be
Loved.
You fall
Every time you are cruel
Because
Cruelty doesn't live in you
If you don't give it a home-
I've said it before, you are of the earth,
And the earth is never cruel.
It is brutal, it is wild, it is tumultuous
But it
Is never
Cruel.

When your photo comes up,
I look close,
Although it hurts.
I search your eyes for cowardice.
And maybe I just love you
But I never find any.
I find certainty.
And maybe that is worse.
Maybe the certainty that alone is better
Is more despicable than weakness of character, more damaging than fear.
Maybe fangs, when used to fend off every touch,
Are more foolish
Than tears ever could be.

You'll leave scars on my hands--
I promised you.
Just wait.
And everyone who ever holds them
Kisses them
Or glances at them will see
The evidence of you.
Try to force me to forget you
And I will put you on my skin.
Control
*That.

I have learned
Disturbingly
To settle into fear, like an old house settles on its foundation
Sinking by the year.
It used to rise me-
It used to pick me up and batter me
Like the surf batters stones on the ocean floor
Tossing them and beating them upon the rocks.
Now, like an anchor or a shipwreck I...
Settle.
I stay, hard and heavy and dark
Pinned in place and dully aware
Dully waiting--
For a storm to send down debris,
Or the sun to lance through the waves and touch my cold face.
I settle.
I am here, in fear,
I am here
And I am tired
And I refuse to use my strength to struggle in my nets.
Instead, I sleep. I wait. I
Settle.

It always makes me smile
To see them fawn over you.
I know it is a joke to them
But it's an even richer joke to me
Because I know their poetic words to be truer than they imagine
And their exaggerated awe more appropriate than parody.
Maybe it's gauche, but that doesn't make it false, and
That fills me with laughter, quietly.
They don't know the truth
And you don't know the truth
And yet it is being told to hundreds, unabridged and unexaggerated-
How delicious!
How thrilling, when reality is revealed
In such a way that all but the most observant may think it a lie.
It makes the knowing of it somehow more special, I think--

They kiss your hands and compare your eyes to stars
And I wonder if it ever occurs to them
That they should.

I think maybe she is sad today.
And the idea pulls me toward her.
I sit in the hall,
Although the floor is cold and I could be anywhere else.
I have to be near her.
I can't go farther.
I have to be here, just in case I can look at her for a moment and judge how happy or unhappy she might be.
Oh, I want to give her something.
The need is consuming.
So I give her the only thing I can think of-
My time.
I sit in the hall and wait,
In case perhaps I could see her and maybe make her smile.

I love your hands. I know it's a strange thing to say, but I really do. You were leaning back, drumming your fingers on the stage and I caught myself thinking how perfectly made they were, how every line was so important, so lovely and smooth. Long fingers, and surprisingly graceful in their movements, at odds with the rest of you at times. They are hands I could picture cupping clear water from a pure stream, holding that kind of liquid light in a very natural way. I could picture them parting velvety soil to coax young green sprouts from it, lines and creases made more bold by the clinging love the earth would show you. I could picture them, too, gliding along piano keys, although I know you don't play. I think you could. I think those keys would love your fingertips. They'd sing for you. In the safety of my mind, I sometimes long to hold them, turn them over and learn the valleys of your palms like braille, follow the paths the years have carved in them. Not in a covetous way, but in a soft, gentle way. Those are the thoughts that make me blush, that make me keep my distance.

I want you to know that
The time I get with you
I treasure.
Whether we are lifelong friends
Or you leave tomorrow
The time I get with you
I treasure.
We are transient by nature.
I could have a hundred years to know you
And it would not be enough.
I could have a hundred years to feel the rain and watch the sun rise and laugh and cry and love
And it would not be enough.
It is not nearly enough
And so I
Treasure it.
I want you to know that
Any moment I spend with you
Any art I make with you in mind,
I am giving you a piece of my life,
The most precious thing I have,
Slipping through a sieve
More each day.
And I give it to you because
I know that yours will someday run out as well.
(And the thought lances through me,
And no wonder the sky weeps rain
With such a loss hurtling toward it
So inevitably.)
The time I get with you
I treasure
Because beautiful things
Are always transient
And I mean to love them all
While I still can.