When you asked if I'd like to get coffee, I knew if I went
that it would be the last time that I would see you
for the first time. I went anyways.

After I saw you there, sitting with your friends,
I realized all my previous conjectures were fashionably wrong.
Things started to become clear when your knee
settled against mine, and our eyes locked fatally
for the first time.

It was then I began to fathom that I wanted
to touch you how you turn the pages of a book
when you're lost between the words.

It occurred to me that you could read
the names and dates and causes
of death off a gravestone, and
I would still sit and listen to the way
that your voice collides with
all that empty space.

The one thing I knew I would never be able
to do was put you into words. Yet here I am,
trying anyways.