Listen...

Listen.

Silence is the sound of asteroids colliding,
reverberations of nothing,
like the universe is holding its breath.
In it I hear the hum of
our heartbroken divisions.

I pull you toward me
like holding my ear to the ground
to hear your thoughts before you say them.
I want to travel with you
like waking up in
a moving elevator’s amnesia.
Lend me your periscope, that I might
watch the story of your landscape,
the explanation of the hills’ undulating curves
until I feel the grassblades.

Our bodies are more our possessions than
our selves.
We barter them for reassurance
that our isolation is contrived,
but our awarenesses embrace like fish would.
We gasp for breath, using our devotions
like life rafts and Teflon
but they’re more like grappling hooks, ropes
from which we swing when
the wall is impassable.
You are hesitant to trade me your twine
and we are both slipping.

I don’t want to catch you,
but plummet next to you. So
tell me what you are hiding, or
hold me close enough
to hear it inside you.
I am listening for the hum
of your heartbreak,
but all I can hear is the chortling
of your demons.
I know we can’t reach,
but try. There is
importance in the space
between fingers about to touch,
even if they never do,
like an old woman's desperate stare
into her husband’s distant eyes,
even when he can't remember her,
like gravity redirecting a comet
around a planet it won’t hit.

I'm not asking you to love me.
I'm asking you to hold me like
you're not afraid of me,
like the rest of our segmented existence
was rearranging outside of our manic clutch,
like this curb was the lip of a volcano,
like this was your last chance.
It might be.
Anchor me while this sidewalk melts.
Tell me what you are hiding.
Hum me your heartbreak.
Weave your confusion into mine
and clench until we suffocate,
until we have no choice but to float,
until we are wound together,
an inseparable spool, a cosmic collision,
our fracture across instead of between us.

Hold me.
Suffer with me.

Then pick me off like a scab.
Shudder the pink of a new scar
as you disregard this protection.
Don’t look back now.
Supernova between us; we are distant.
Goodnight.
I will miss you.
Goodbye.