Again this morning my eyes woke up too close
to your eyes,
their almost green orbs
too heavy-lidded to really look back.
To wake up next to you
is ordinary. I do not even need to look at you
to see you.
But I do look. So when you come to me
in your opulent sadness, I see
you do not want me
to unbutton you
so I cannot do the one thing
I can do.
Now it is almost one a. m. I am still at my desk
and you are upstairs at your desk a staircase
away from me. Already it is years
of you a staircase
away from me. To be near you
and not near you
is ordinary.
You
are ordinary.
Still, how many afternoons have I spent
peeling blue paint from
our porch steps, peering above
hedgerows, the few parked cars for the first
glimpse of you. How many hours under
the overgrown, pink Camillas, thinking
the color was wrong for you, thinking
you'd appear
after my next
blink.
Soon you'll come down the stairs
to tell me something. And I'll say,
okay. Okay. I'll say it
like that, say it just like
that, I'll go on being
your never-enough.
It's not the best in you
I long for. It's when you're noteless,
numb at the ends of my fingers, all is
all. I say it is.