“you’re a lot nicer
in person”, she
says to me,
says to me
in an email.
what would have
once been
a letter.
we spent
an hour, maybe
two,
in the odd sprawl
of a surprise garden,
tucked quietly
behind a bakery,
on the side
of a country road.
i saw love
in her eyes and
i have love
on my lips.
the former,
perhaps
only illusion.
the latter,
given to her
briefly, and then
taken
by the wind.
i always give
to the wind.
today,
the wind is
exuberant.
it comes to
my shores in a
steady blow.
it gusts me
away from my dock.
it causes my lines
to moan in their effort.
and she,
she is silent
on the far shore.
i still see
love in her eyes,
though she does not
look at me.
instead she points
a flower
towards me,
its large eye,
unblinking.
petals rotate,
flutter,
in the wind.
it is silent here
at night. silent
and dark.
like a placating tomb.
over there,
the night erupts
in frog and insect.
i part my lips for
their utterances
of love, sent
humming on
the wind.
it is dark
and silent here,
i cannot see
the trick of her
eyes.
it is loud
with love,
over where she is.
the insects and
frogs sending
their need out
into the sky,
letting it float back
down, gently
settling.
love sent
from so far away,
where it could be
heard against
the ink of silence,
it is now only
a whisper.
a seedling
in a field
of voices.
all asking for
the same thing.
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