Only a certain type of person
can not feel
the obligation of a previous impulse.
Empathy unable to project,
so the knowledge just cools and settles.
Tightly filed away
with strangers
and ghosts.

Instead,
those reassuring idiosyncrasies
come together,
fill out a single consciousness.
Little pieces of oneself
left behind in others.
Like being informed of fresh snow
only by it’s passing.

The most ordinary
can be given extraordinary weight
if you're willing to go there,
dissolve into another space with a stranger.

Saying I love you goodnight
as a farewell.
Exchanging fragments of a finite existence for
objects holding just a fraction of how long
someone spends in the back of our mind.
Using a thumb to draw shapes
on the hand we’re holding.

Picking up the phone when someone
who used to love you calls.
Neither one lying
next to a reason
not to answer.

Construction of everyday moments
as monuments
to a time more boreal.
A calmness you can’t help
but immediately notice.

Starting down a path with someone,
who will never tell you where to go.
It’s your choice to move forward
amongst the brittle nettles
and grey
cloaked and mysterious in the weight of birdsong
and footsteps.

Soon the time will get away
you will no longer recognize her
or yourself
or us or
them.