Herself

   Horizons    

We're here alone
on a wide plain
that stretches from
the dawn horizon to
the night horizon.

Somewhere, a giant heart
is beating -
I turn to look and
see that it is the ocean
without a sea.

I would touch
your subtle palm. The
lights here on the edge of the world
are thin and insubstantial.
The streetlights have yet to go on.

**

Out here, on a plain
that stretches from the
morning horizon to the
evening horizon,

your eyes are dilated.
It's because, moments earlier,
you stared into the sun
(which was halfway to its azimuth)
you said it was too bright
and wished it would go out.

love, I said, love me,
and not for the explicit purpose
of lips to lips or
fingers splayed like dying starfish
against fingers.

Love me like you don't know
what the word means,
as if it is echoing
through an empty room.

***

I am here
writing of an empty room
because I've been here before,
following the shadows from
dawn to dusk where,
at noon, yours got stuck
against mine
in the corner,
crumpling into dust as
quietly as origami being folded

I listen to music
that is not being played,
that leaks out of my eyes
in the form of tears
(one hits the floor and
I remember the sound of
violins with their strings
on the verge of snapping)

I glance out the window
of this empty room

I see your shadow and mine
standing on a wide plain
that stretches from
dawn to dusk

Aching to hold hands
in the light of a fading sun.