There were
words
as symbols,
cymbals—
the quiet roll
of a snare drum
slipping from your hands.
Late-night phone calls from Kolkata
your hair dripping wet
with the water of ashes,
smoke in your mouth,
your body like music
that never stopped playing.
A thousand silk scarves
tied around my wrists.
Photographs of the happiest
I can ever remember being,
both of our cheeks flushed red.
The time you found me among
the tallest trees on Earth,
the entire Pacific Northwest,
forests that ran into beaches
and all of our 16-year-old fantasies.
Snowflakes bigger than our hands,
on our tongues,
your eyes half-open and half-shut,
the language that I made up
just to say:
“I loved you once” and
“please stay”
in a thousand different ways.
Here is the poem I never gave you,
the poem I wrote you a thousand times
when you were hundreds of miles away.
Here is the poem I never gave you,
I’m sorry that it’s a thousand lifetimes
too late.