Sound travels fast in water, while banal-
intent carries on wind. I span the difference,
distance between abating and loss, my arms
open as wide as a cross, the way I used
to mime, I love you this much. My fingertips,
twirl, dancers under masked moon,
stretch to reach back to each other,
the only heat they find. Did you perceive
the shift? One of us became separate, the other
whole. Like when faith fails and the Bible
abstracts. Jesus becomes a kind, wronged mere
man. I suffer no crisis of conscience in the profane,
no loss of joy. Compassion ignites. Divine
space grows — light in the Potomac, Ursa Major,
Cuckold Creek, a wink from a stranger, the brushing
off of dirt. Your spirit, tangled in want, reaches through
the impossibility of phone lines. You speak
into my ear to craft intimacy of our past —
secluded beach where clothes peeled off, skins
of snakes on patrol at the shore. I don’t respond
because I once loved you. Now I cradle extraction
of scent-memory from playing house. How you
withheld gleaming in my darkness but I still
shined. I hear your vacancy, but I am full.