you always made it look easy  
to pry back your corners,  
carve out a piece of your heart  
and transform it into soulsong  
Your words and rhymes laying perfectly over your intentions  

snapshots of your soul  
painted in love and pain and blood,  
whispers in your synonyms and syllables.  
I saw your soul laid bare, and in my heart it was just for me  
each of your tomes a secret glimpse to savor  
so brash to see myself in some  
and cowardly to hope absent from others  

so I wrote.  
stumbling after your eloquence,  
fumbling and unpracticed  
without any of your skill or precision,  
clawing at myself for something  
I could offer, to speak to you  
in your own language  
as if some small piece of you still belonged to me  

which makes you my muse  
of a sort I suppose  
For truly every time that I wrote  
I wrote for you.  
not for you, but to you  
to read me and know me  
my heart pressed between the pages of a book  

and we communed  
as close as 1’s and 0’s would permit  
through lines on a screen  
never able to reach past our fingertips  
a call and response  
in codes and comment boxes.  
A secret conversation between us,  
that not even we spoke about  
until we didn’t speak at all  
but I can still find you in the lines  
and imagine you are talking to me