Nearly a Love Poem

Perhaps to love is to be silent.

Listening deeply to your flat voice

I make my own meet it and match it.

Hearing your words, I use them in my own sentences.

When you breathe, I too take my breath in

in quick shallow draughts.

Perhaps to love is to leave old things behind.

Stories no one remembers but me

do not serve any cause now.

My broken bones have mended

and all the dreams we never shared

are coming true.

I did not think I would ever love you.

Did not think it possible to be grateful to you

for anything.

But now, that the remarkable settling

of our mother’s spirit has occurred,

Perhaps this pacing of my silence

is the very truest love gesture I can make.