It might seem like I’m gone
but I’m not. In this world things do not leave
they simply transform and are sublimated
into something else. So I have not left you
but I have become something new.
What is this new thing
that I have become? Strangely,
we do not have a word for it,
but you are holding on to it
right now.
If I had to try and describe
what I have become
I would say
you are the water
and I was the salt, and now I’m dissolved
in the ocean of your body.
If you would like to find me,
I am hidden within you,
resting in between the
pulsing tides of your heart.
Or if it is early autumn
and the ocean feels like a fading dream
I would tell you
to reach out a hand to your heart’s mind
and pluck the memories of us like plums
from the fingertips of bearing branches.
I flow through you now like the nectar
that fed the flowers that fed the bees
that fed the fruit that fed you.
We ate those sweet wild plums
until we were sick with laughter.
You are full of me—
I am not gone.
I am not here, but
I am not gone.