09.09.025-26.10.025 Invitation (Tin Mirror)

What a wonderful thing:

enough time face-to-face

to know the curves of your eyes.

Enough space: vocal folds vibrating diatomic air

to cochlear-hair receptors;

communicating how, when, where, why.

More smiling in a day than I’d seen from you

across a desk, across years.

It can be a terror to be known; it can be a pleasure.

I can feel like a mess most of the time.

I did not, that day (and still,

I worry I seemed that way) with you.

I worry too much.

I don’t worry enough.

I worry about the wrong things.

I don’t want to let the world in;

I don’t want to invite the future,

in all of its possibility.

I want you to be my world

in this present moment, solely;

I only want to know what is.

Let us take off our shoes;

walk into the woods; breathe in

evergreen; hear the willows’ weepings.

Please don’t leave so soon.

Don’t bolt, don’t wither

if I grow sad, if I anger—

those feelings will never be rooted in you.

Please linger, here: petrichor-wreathed;

warm-milkweed green.

To someday see our faces

florecientes, adjacent—

tangent in a tin mirror—

darling, that would be a dream.

I do not want to wake.

Please pause, please stay;

I have a soft spot waiting.