Words of Flight, How They Pass Between

Passing different lines, I try and see exactly where the intersections spell out your name. It twists and turns, and I write about it, not for myself, not even to clarify the smog, perhaps not even for you…but to lay some tracks across an otherwise naïve trail.

I wish I could give each person this gift. If I could lay before the sunset, trace the red that changes so brilliantly to orange and spell it out somehow b-e-t-w-e-e-n the curves of letters, if I could, it still wouldn’t create a ribbon between my dreaming and you.

It shifts, the subject. At first I thought I was writing to you (points North) but perhaps I am writing to you (points West). And if that’s the case, I change my tone, slightly, because even if we meet at the exact same place, the shoe-prints will be of different sizes.

I love you in my way. As if I could produce manuscripts on the way you think, how your line of thought goes in and out of the briar patch, stuck, some days, to my sides.

And to trust that even among strangers I can see your form.

That we have already forgiven each other for loving imperfectly.

That my Dictionary weighs less because of the absence of your name.

And your light? What can I do but sift through with my toes what my mouth has already spelled, leapt forward to catch?

Yes, wind comes through the cracks between wood, but notice, so does sunlight. We build for ourselves as much as for each other and I’ll be here for ages cleaning the dust from the modest floor, sweeping the broom and repeating words and names into the air which float to the roof as I watch them fly out into tops of trees. Because I live there, too, flying to greet our unborn joy.

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Tell me, what faith have you gathered around you? Where is the source? I can never trace it back to mud, to the body, to the places one can visit. Sometimes I read your words and sit silently for hours.

When the heat breaks through, it rests its heavy body somewhere next to my heart. Do you know this panic? To listen to its static all through the night, hoping among the paper-shreds, a speck of you might come through, and I can save it, record it.

I am merely a boat of sorts, catching things along the way. Some days there are anchors. Some days a shifting of words. The point is, I know nothing about direction. Sometimes I cannot even see your light. Where is the source?

To open your arms like you do, like the world could send itself kindly to your door. But I know there are hours of teeth and I cannot catch you in the middle of brier, frozen in between states, doubting I’ll be your messenger again. The brier grows up to the throat.

Still, I read your words and sit silently for hours, wondering. Who unfolded their hands first? Did your words fly in from the window. What is the origin of their bones?