principles of aesthetic distance

I’m looking for a raft as the water swells up

damn skippy

-like a vagabond-

we hadn’t known each other long enough

to earn any heartbreak

but I felt it anyway

I was so in love with you

“for some

time isn’t a river

but a sewer”

and somewhere

tattooed on my soul

in an ink ground from your words in a mortar and pestle

I’m left to wonder

how far apart we really are.

somewhere in my head

you are still wrapped up with me

in a sheet

and everything I know

and cling to and

love about you

is as familiar to me

as the curve of your instep under this blanket…

the jilted lover never understands the concept

of space.

I can’t just disappear now.

I’m losing sleep

over sweet joy

and wondering if the memory of me in your mind

is little more than a crude effigy of who I really am.

In truth

to you I am

everything and nothing

a single note within a song

beautiful all on my own

but deliberately placed

part of your melody

weaving myself in and out.

you’re lodged like shrapnel

cutting from the inside out

and the harder I try to ignore the pain

the stronger the burn.

I find I’m fading fast

and the distance between

you

and me

and what I’ve dubbed my revolution

continues to puzzle my heart’s GPS.

it’s so easy to quit

throw hands up

walk away and leave

hope, less.

longing, feeling, wishing direct me back on track

and I force myself to remember

that I grant wishes in my dreams

and then we all come true…

the truth is

I’ve got the measurement all wrong:

time is the longest distance

between to hearts.