I want you to see me

I want you to see me at a scrabble board when my mind frog-leaps from one consonant tile to another.


I want you to see me in a single premonition, brush stroke by brush stroke, the self portrait I’d like to paint of myself.

I want you to see prophesies of my sleep writ large between the cantos of the next poem you’ll read.

I want to be seen when you awaken to the noises of your children’s play because the invisible inheritances of blood may be mislaid but cannot be lost altogether.

I want to be seen amidst words that you want to set to music and in the music you want to pry words out of to devour it distilled and dead.

I want to be seen at dusk when sudden darkness and purple skies incite smiles that eluded every playful word that was said to you in the day.

Most importantly of all see me when we walk together at night, our solitudes ripening separately in the shade of the same trees.

See me in secret sideways glances, taking care not to shatter the equilibrium that scarcely keeps us an unclasped arm’s length apart. A fatal distance that forbids me from stepping closer, a distance like the light years that keeps worlds from smashing headlong into another, like silent afterthoughts that hide within tongue and teeth long after words have passed, like the uncharted darkness between stars.