There’s no point trying to reply to you in words,
You wrote them, you taught them how to have meaning.
I can only reply with my eyes that you make glow like
The embers of underwater volcanoes
Erupting to build new islands on the strength of your words
Because when I hear your voice I can re-imagine geography
As a shifting map of where we’re going and where we’ve been
And I track plate tectonics knowing
Your voice will always lead me back to the place where our continents collide
Because your words have anchors in my heart
And the tethers that stretch from you to me are my proof
That no man is an island and instead I stand
Like a mountain range at your back,
The place where granite stops to lean when it gets tired,
The place where no flood from our world’s tears, no unstoppable deluge of fears
Can drown the olive branch I hold out so you know
It’s always safe for you to moor here.
I want to be the harbour your words sail home to
When they’re weary from leading expeditions back to truth,
To the place where words have meaning.
I don’t see you with clay feet;
Instead, like continents our bodies are built in layers,
Like river beds they run with silt and sand and are forever changing,
And when we touch they bend, they clash, they combine
And like deltas we carve new channels between us –
New rivers running out of me towards the source of your words.
What I want to say is I’m here for you
But when you’re not here my eyes can’t strive to send that message to you.
When all I have is paper, then all I have are these words and
Like I said,
There’s no point trying to reply to you in words,
You wrote them, you taught them how to have meaning,
So when I try to send them back to you it’s like
Ten year olds playing telephone, the words just don’t hit home –
They run into one another and have a collective crisis of identity
And I don’t want to do that to your words,
I want to stoke them like embers so they dare to become fires
I want them to have wings so they can carry you
So you can rain down words upon us
And write us, and show us how to have meaning again –
How to use words and finally mean them
So all of our diction is dependent on conviction
And our words stand out like lightening rods – not afraid of bolts of brilliance –
Because underneath the exit signs from the catacombs of ignorance,
Your words hold open the door.
And even when you’re silent,
When your words don’t fill the air between us anymore,
My eyes will still say I’m here
And my hand will be that harbour where you can anchor and find
A moment of stillness on the turbulent sea of words
And you can lean on me and in that moment
See my eyes say I’m here
And if words have left you weary and you need
Someone to hold you sometimes, don’t fear
Because even though I can’t reply in words, I’m near and even
Without words, you can see what you mean to me
And my eyes will say I love you
And mean it when my words can’t.