Always, again

"Because you once said you liked the way I exist."

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"You have been in every line I have ever read." - Charles Dickens

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I swallow the obvious words
like bright stones.
If I let them spill,
my mouth would become a river
with only one name for water.

I send you fragments of my day
like feathers I’ve found on the pavement,
small proofs I was looking at the world
and thought of your hands inside it.

A tune drifting through a room,
left on your doorstep like a feather.
I heard this and thought of you,
though I never say the sentence aloud.

I turn my face toward a lens
though I distrust mirrors,
leave you a small proof I exist,
a star pinned to paper.
Because you once said you liked the way I exist.

I ask if the world has been gentle with you today.
If you have been tending to your body,
to keep it warm and moving.
This is how I place my palm
against the distance between us.

And when the night grows quiet,
I trace you constellations out of words,
pictures made of ink and heartbeat,
because saying it outright
would never be enough,
and this,
this is how I let you know
you are everywhere in me.

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