I cannot sleep, for I'm nursing a sheep,
A coughing, sputtering lamb;
I cannot rest, for I'm doing my best
My medicinal best that I can.

Mama was young, and she knew no demands
For how to care, it was told;
Mama was scared, and she left them to stand
And to freeze in the shuddering cold.

Baby girl died, it was frosty and bleak
Under that black food bowl she lay;
Baby girl died, she was so unique
The size of a child's shoe, she bayed.

So here I sit nursing a poor coughing lamb,
Here I sit nursing a sick deathly man,
Here I sit hoping-just maybe- he'll live,
Futilely promising my life for his.

I skirt the edges of humanity,
a lone wolf, incalculable
in silent black dresses that flutter
and colossal ideas that squirm,
yearning to see themselves
reflected back in the moonlight.

You shift on my horizons,
a quiet place amidst the swell
of violent noise and clenched teeth,
and something in you keeps
drawing me back- a magnetism.
I walk amongst your leaves,
feel your scattered light,
and it is calm. It is home.

You see me, not the smiling
daguerreotype that I paste up,
but deeper- inky black and serpentine,
with feelings that swell
and burst like balloons.

We tread lightly over the bones
of things we've left unsaid,
our eyes reflecting mirror images
of words that swim and satiate
this primal thirst, a spark
of unconventional
connectivity.

The stark realization that you're not here but rather, you were here in this bed, in these sheets, these arms....it hits me like a wave of lightning.
Tears turn to snow, fears turn to a numbing glow, and I miss you... Yet I know the rising operatic voices of the symphony of hope that plays in the background of my life's video game will rise higher than the brightest sunset and deepest tidal wave...because ironically, you miss me too. Through all my faults and accidentally elbowing you in the stomach and growling at you just because I know you hate it....you still miss me. How, I don't quite understand, and no matter how many times you try to show me, I'll still never get it, I'll just be mesmerized by the rave lights dancing in your eyes pulsing to the beat of my jack rabbit heart. Why can't we slow? Why can't we insist this isn't real, that we are going to wake up, why can't we agree to pinch each other to prove that reality is indeed upon us, that awakening to smell the roses is better than dreaming about them? Yet I find myself amidst the ardour of their smell and realize it is in fact an olfactory experience, and not a shift of the bored, school-ridden mind. Yes, you are real, far away- 1700 miles, in fact- but you are real; my fingers could touch a screen against your digitized fingerprints and somewhere, some way, you'd feel something pressing back gently as the dew. Because I'm here. And I love you.
And I don't want us to end. Ever.

Darling?

Darling?

Darling?

I love you, I swear it.
I'm not upset, I swear it.
I'm safe, I swear it.

I'm better- can you believe that?

We say I love you over the phone in an echoing tone
Over and over and over again.

It is only now that I realize it's for each and every day we cannot talk, so that not a day goes by without being filled with one. And I smile at this realization.

And I hope you do too. You're beautiful with a smile and without.

But seeing that smile gives me so much hope, angel.

And I love you.

I love you.

I love you.