I see her in sound, and touch her
in text. She always comes in Times
New Roman, with hazel eyes
that shift to green, in the shades
of emoticons that linger on the screen
like laughter, drawn from the inside
jokes of an old apartment. When we speak
the air is thick with the residue of want,
that weaves itself into a memory of her
chest rising and falling as she sleeps.
The girl next door is 3,000 miles away.
Our voices drift together like slip streams,
like oceanic currents carrying our scents,
her apples and dried apricots, her hands
kneading and rolling flour into her skin.
We are together in a crack become chasm,
between the fingers and the keyboard,
between bedside vigils and empty beds,
between what love was, and what love is.
Our words locked between the twin cages
of our memories and imagination, but
we beat down the walls, sometimes
with hammers of breath and chisels
of sigh, we pause, holding what we have
against all that we have lost. We know
our present is where the past and future
exchange glances, like mirrors facing,
exchanging a million stares, reading
a billion palms that ache to touch,
to make love more than a word.
And she does.
My eyes closed, my pulse quickens
and merges with the footfalls on carpet
until she crawls into bed. Her powers
over me with words cannot compare
to her fingers, tracing over my skin
the perfect geometry of her thoughts.
And without a sound she has erased
every moment lost in the tumble
of talk and text. I realize here
in her smile silence, that I’ve found
a sixth sense. That her eyes, shifting
held a thousand books, and I lose
myself in the library of her skin.
She is a place where even a drifter,
like me, could always come back,
and feel like I’ve never left. Her
voice, even through the tiny speakers
filled rooms, filled streets and cities,
but the light of her face,
that’s home.