Under a Rock Face

Found Under A Rock-Face

Something occurred to me in the gym shower today. Yes, I was surfing the highs of endorphins and thought, I know what will help me push through this word-hurry, this undefinable silence.

I will come back to you.

When I was working the 8-5, finding my way through the excess, I fell back on speaking to you.

Who are you? A you that I know but have never seen.

And I've missed speaking directly to you.

Help me, help me gather my thoughts. Where did you go today, for instance? What were the paths you walked?

Did you notice how your body felt, reawakening into the world this morning?

I laughed, once, so hard in sleep that it woke me up into night. It felt like a beautiful shock. A shock sweetened by joy. Have you ever woken to laughter, as though some voice inside passed their hand along your belly, like a smoothing stone or as your parent did to put you to some calmer state?

Lovers do that, too.

As does the grass.

I wondered, if I stopped writing you, would you fade? Would the tree-house we climbed together, crumble?

Wait! You think,

We never met at a tree-house,

but we did. Or maybe under a rock-face.

Watch me, I say, jump off the dock into the lake!

Oh, I remember an evening near to a voice,

near a skimmed lake.

And you never stopped, faded,

And even, I remember, today I called your name.

It was raining and the grass reminded me of England.

It was raining and the smell of pine drifted me to New Mexico,

It was raining and the wet is the wet the voice tells me about sometimes,

How, underneath a rock-face or in a tree-house,

What was uttered once will be uttered again,

Even in the words we use to undo each other,

In the text messages and emails,

In the little notes I write to myself, on place mats,

On the back of someones hand, on a lamp-post,

Or the pillow where things unsaid tremble against the weight of my body.

I will come back to you, laughing, high up in a tree-house or under a rock-face.