We made a bridge of words across oceans
over which our love commutes, rides
a slow train through recurring dreams,
you know the ones, they start the same way;

a familiar place – a bedroom, a backyard,
until the landscape evaporates, a voice calls,
from behind the sun or the moon, until I am left
in a zone entirely composed of her voice
floating in the silk of her sound, at peace
with the piece of her my mind can conjure
or will conjure, and then drift back
to the present, to the room, emptied of her.

Between her dream speak and her phone speak
I am molding myself, to a new life, the one
where she enters, and never leaves.
On good days it grows, balloons across
decades, where smiles appear with wrinkles
where bliss intervenes and shoulders
the weight of life. And while I wait

she molds herself to the shape of desire
she suspects that others have, though
I love more than could ever be held
within the confines of her skin.

She runs, she swims, she bikes, as if
it is only when she stops moving,
that she is unsatisfied, as I am, when I’m
not moving toward her. One airline
terminal, six layovers, and a glass
of warm wine later. In between meetings

we send songs, back and forth between
screens, and I can see her, listening
with her whole body, her eyes closed,
receding into her mind’s black world,
filling it, peopling it with sound.

There

she moves with such fluidity, that I hope
the day of judgment is a dance contest.
Though I’ll never be a good dancer.