i touch your hands
a warmth
a coldness
a desire i feel
not for what you think
but for the way your skin feels
atop mine
the softness of a moment
that asks for nothing
but somehow
leaves everything behind
and i bleed for this
in the way we could exist
in the way we were
in the little pieces
that never had enough time
to become anything else
and i hope you sit down here
by the river sometimes
in my mind
in the ideas
of where we could have been
where the water moves slowly
and the trees bend
just enough to listen
i hope you find them too
because at night
i think of you often
like how our hands
met each other
before our bodies did
how our eyes interlocked
and something inside me
recognized the feeling
before i ever knew
what to call it
and i knew from that moment
you were mine
not in possession
not in promise
but in the way
some people become
part of a memory
before the memory
has even happened
we create time
and i gave you meaning
i gave these moments
what i thought they deserved
the glance
the touch
the little pauses
the things we never said
because saying them
might have changed
what they were
and a younger mind
could split this apart
ask what was real
what was imagined
what belonged to me
and what belonged to you
and i would hope
he would not
because some things
become smaller
when we explain them
too carefully
we cannot control everything
some things are ours
to look at
to feel
to remember
but not to change
and maybe there is beauty
in knowing that
in letting a moment
stay exactly where it was
without dragging it forward
without asking it
to become more
i listen for you in the ether
in where we leave each other
in songs that arrive
from other rooms
in the wind moving
through open windows
in the quiet spaces
where memory likes to sit
i miss you dearly
not always loudly
not always enough
to want you here
but enough
to feel the distance
when something reminds me
how close you once were
and in time
we find our truth
or maybe we only learn
to live beside the questions
without needing them
to answer
because if things are meant to be
they find their way
not always back
but somewhere
down by the river
where the water keeps moving
and the stones remember
every hand
that ever touched them
and i promise
if time bends
if the wind turns
if the song finds
the same place again
we will meet
not where we left
not where we waited
but somewhere softer
somewhere neither of us
has to ask
if it was real
once again