How little of us gets through. I say
“complicated” or “long distance”
and you say you understand. You say “closer”
and I think I know what you mean. Meanwhile,
light streams through eons, atoms
swirl within and around us, the present
vanishes. What we say
seems to make sense, yet beyond the chatter
don’t we go on forever, effortlessly resisting
the fixity of words? I tell you
we are precisely what cannot be spoken
or felt, and so remain secrets
even to ourselves. Still I say
“hello,” dreaming of a clarity
that could preserve me, trying
at once to touch and be touched,
to hear the sound of my own voice,
to believe that what I hear
is here, as clear as my name.
“Love,” I write, wandering. “You and I.”