You’re There

It is dark but I feel your hand on me.

I hear you breathing as your fingers

rest gently on my arm.

I lie beside you and do not want to move.

This nothing touch is nothing you

are capable of any other time.

Its rarity moves me.

Sometimes I chase this flicker fruitlessly,

a will o’ the wisp that cannot, nor will not

be caught.

But tonight I am happy to be still,

to be grateful for this sleep-filled reprieve,

to be reminded.

There was a time when it all came so easily.

There was a time when it was all we could do

not to devour each other.

Our days and nights were light and fire.

Love was something we tasted, drank and breathed.

We let the river take us.

But over time the light was less

and the woods were more. The fire grew small

until it was barely there at all.

But every now and then – a flicker in the dark

that beckons me to move through the woods

to find the way out.

Your will o’ the wisp leads me. Or deceives me.

It may be nothing, or it may be everything

we have.

You lie heavy and very still. Your fingertips

on my skin touch me. I drift towards sleep,

the river, the past, a future.