Kilometers away, I watch
you struggle with your panic and I
grapple with my ever-growing
sense of inadequacy, dearest
your control is slipping and I
want so much to be able even
to offer you a hand to hold or
better yet, a hand to grab and
pull you out but I know
that is not my role in this, are
we living a tragedy or divine
comedy? At these hours I
was never able to tell. Dearest, you
were never darling, because somehow
that name was too common
for you. Oh, love, watch, I
am the bull in the china shop that is
your fragility and I am breaking
things I never fathomed the existence of and
crunching underhoof the shards of things you
will never let me see. Kilometers
away, I wish
there was something, anything
I could do, but as the stars wink out
there is nothing twinkling left
for me to hang my foolish hopes on.

What I love in talking to
you are the subtexts. Constantly running
around all the words we speak, roads
support me when others fail, hold
when others will crumble, you stand.

Darling, when I try
and write to you, all format
flies from my grasp. Haiku and ten
always too little, and prose
I would have to fill with beauty-
words I do not have to describe us
anymore. You see, unlike the family tradition, I was
never a good Scrabble player. Always
only 100 tiles and short, obscure
words never enough to tell a
story that should be rich, not sparsely
populated with only 1 Z, or
2 Ys or 2 Cs. With you I feel
I am playing scrabble with my words. As always,
my darling, (with) you I am losing.

When I say calm down
I mean calm the **** down or
watch me shamefully

try and control all
of my impulses to run
or to brace myself

against the blows I
always knows are waiting right
behind shouted words.