I want to stretch, extend, and multiply
those moments when our laughter forms
its own polyphony, as the stolen breaths
between and the rolling crescendos they
punctuate, combine and keep tempo
with the beat of our hearts, as they echo
into each other, the way, in a different
state of existence, what we were then,
merged together enveloping us, so that
no matter how many lifetimes between
then and now, it is this echo, this merging
we return to, the way each cloud returns
to the ocean, the way celestial bodies
remain in their orbit, the way we heal
when we return to these moments.
I want to strip away this dimension,
step out of these temples and their
bone heaps, return to the space where
we could not pull each other any closer,
where there was no pulling, no boundary
between us, where I first discovered love
could not exist without you, even before
I could define love or you; this was
before breath, or blood, or flesh, before
those small structures that flood and pulse,
before the construction of those chambers
that fill with the whisper that remains
from those moments when time did not
have hands and there was no pulsing
or flooding or memory, simply you and I
as we were created to be.
I want to take the fragments of time,
those measures between the spaces from which
we take and cull the remnants to construct
our memories; all those breaths and silences,
all those moments which fracture and go
unremembered, left in those places we never
return to and never think back upon, all those
pieces which, when we look back and recall
only what we were attentive to, make us
wonder where the years went; recover these
and remove time’s measures, shortening
that time before and extending our future,
giving meaning to each silence, each breath,
as we construct our story, filling its moments
with our love and laughter and every kiss
that reconnects us, to what we once were.