Is it morning? I think I imagine it as a
spring morning—you with a coffee mug
in both hands, the early breeze
sweeping through the white curtains
of your bedroom, and the just-now-breaking
coverage of clouds parted by
the rising sunlight like the words
of a lover passing through gray lips.

It is not quite spring here,
but you can tell that the world is
beginning to awaken to itself.
The trees fight to bloom just as we
must have once, two strangers
scrambling out of the darkness.
I remember you
as a child in large mittens,
hands always cold even later
when your fingers had become
long, sensual, and painted dark against
your now-gray-but-once-red lips.

The most basic of desires is that
pit-of-stomach desire for a loved
one’s happiness, wherever it is that
they may be. And so I hope that you are happy.
I hope that the wind blows the sunlight
in through open curtain windows softly
like a whispered word and the coffee
is always just warm enough to keep
your fingers from the chill
and that it is always spring,
wherever you are.