I.
Wading through the cold current of your silence,
.........................................................I am waist deep, going deeper as I move
towards you. Your skin of night is soft and hot
..............................almost against me, but an ice floe breaks loose,
pushes me away. For a moment, I forget to breathe:
...............................................the cold air, dangerous, jagged in my chest.
What a pair we are: you fear intimacy; I fear abandonment.
Love, think of the continents
our blood has traveled to bring us here.II.
You are a house without doors; I am a house without walls.
It is raining. Open the window and let me in.
III.
Does my unrequited love for words render you silent,
or does your silence render my love for words unrequited?
All I know is when the words come, in my torrent of loneliness
you are left looking silly, helpless as any man
desperately clutching an umbrella under a volcano.
IV.
Six years ago, I lifted our daughter high
......................under a December night's sky, until her small heart filled up
with words of longing:
......................"Oh hold you moon."
Wordless lexicons opened up inside me. And I felt held in that moment.
(Is this your language, and will you teach me?)
........................Never mind, love, don't
speak; Just hold me like that.
