conversations lift from unnamed tongues
flirting with a language you don’t speak
the striving certainty, the swift confidence
unable to relate to hands finding themselves
in the corners of empty pockets
contemplating the why’s and the how come’s

distilling this patience which has remained
a novel idea lost in its own defeat
through the parameter of this potential
you’re convinced lives inside you
wishing to relate to a God who only loves
and can carry someone else’s burden

you’ve found truths to distinguish
where opportunity ends and regret begins
longing to reach this distance
of comfortable laughs and romantic gestures
existing in exchanges of foreign camaraderie
a language that cannot easily be taught