I long for you,
as one dying longs for time.
In you I lose myself,
like sugar melting in dark warmth,
without form,
without return,
inseparably bound.
The fibers of my skin breathe your name.
In the soft folds of my fingers you lie hidden,
a secret only my hands know.
Visions of you fill my days,
and wring my heart empty,
again and again,
until nothing remains but you.
And when the wrinkles of my fingers can no longer carry your memory,
my soul will.
Two cans,
one pressed tight to my mouth,
the other,
I never thought to ask where it went.
I spoke in careful fragments,
light as breath,
afraid too much weight
might snap the line,
afraid the silence meant
I had done it wrong.
Sometimes there was a sound,
a faint tremble,
a distant hum,
and I named it an answer.
I gentled my voice for it.
I stayed.
Years passed like this
measuring connection by tension,
by how long I could hold the thread
without breaking what I believed was there.
Until one day
my hands slipped,
and the string fell slack.
Not snapped.
Not broken.
Just
untied.
The other can
lay somewhere in the grass
where no one had ever stood,
no one had ever listened,
no one had ever known my name.
And all that time
I had been speaking,
so softly,
so carefully,
to the empty end
of something
I thought was shared.