I know you are not doing well.

I can feel it.

My heart swelling even over this distance.

Even after all this time.

I am not in a position for asking.

But, please, tell of the spring when it comes like you promised.

You need not remember me, if it brings you pain please scour it from your thoughts.

Allow me to keep you, as you were, the words of a bubbling brook and the eyes of a summer sky.

Your name has changed and mine has too.

Is the world kinder to you yet?

Beyond the capacity I held for it.

I remember before we were strangers but never before we were friends.

I have not lost love for you.

Though I am much further now.

God be with you, bless you, keep you, in the ways I could not.

I can be honest
About everything
Except my feelings towards you
I could spin you
Word woven tapestries
About the way
The moon stirs my heart
But may God lean against
What stirs for you in me
This gentle hunger
The weak spot in my throat
Time moves sideways
Breathe baits
Catching on the last lingering hope
That you would burn for me

Feeling out my way through this world
Not much better than blindness
How will I know
When you're bluffing
Still, I fold
Into the night

You, who I once found comforting
Now curate such opposite energy
What are you holding
Not in your empty hands
But inside
Where my stomach would be churning
If I spoke the way you spoke

I do not know
If the waves love or hate the shore
I can only perceive
Have you dived
Into your own depths
What did you find
In the murky waters
Or did you back away
From the shadows
Of your own darkness
To look inward
Is to have open eyes

I want to know you
I learned your middle name yesterday
I want to hear about your day but get distracted because I am lost in the sound of your voice
I want to see myself through your eyes because they are kinder, gentler, more patient
I want to feel my skin under your hands because it is softer, smoother, more tangible
I cannot bear to show you my tears because God forbid you would look on me with kindness and I would know it for the first time
I am afraid as you listen when I talk you will only hear my words and not the heart I hold for you beneath
I want to press my body into yours until the tiny pores of your skin open up and let me in
I want to trace my nails along the contours of your spine and feel your long breath go out with the stress of the day
You have a scar above your eyebrow, I know how it got there
I want to watch the lines on your face as you ripen into old age
I want to know what quickens your heart
What slows your breath
What fills your thoughts
What empties your eyes of their joy
My ears hear no other voice as gently as they do yours
So whisper to me in the dark
That I can stay with you
Until the light returns

When we are done here
I will save the parts of us
That make beautiful fiction
I do not always want to acknowledge
The unhealed parts of my self
That seep into my clear waters
I do not expect you
To kneel at my muddy banks
And drink
Know that I would see you quenched
Not thirst
How long will the threshing floor turn
While I wait hungry
For the grain to separate
From my sins