Day 834: the 10th poem i've written for you called distance

i like to write you poems most when you are standing before me
when i can feel the weight of your breath from the other end of the room
the way your chest expands and makes the space between us collapse
how every part of my body
forgets its mother tongue
in the moment
i am the most sacred kind of silence

now
i am just the fumbling clicks of a keyboard
the tumbling turn of a hard drive
the repetition of it all
reminded me of your chest
rising and falling
but nothing about this moment makes me collapse
doesnt dare remind me of your love
instead
i am a birdcage of feathers expanding
waiting to be pushed beyond my limits
waiting to break and fall
crash in silence
under the hum of a keyboard while you continue with whatever part of your day you are living now

charli,
on nights like these
i am anything but the masterpiece you are worthy of
the furthest thing from
the language will come to our children in their first breath
i am the awkward stutter sticking out of a fluid family of vowels
i feel like im made of edges
constructed with cracks
and gravity and distances are rubber bands pulling me in every direction other than yours

this is the only kind of poem i can write from this end of a computer screen
when i can see you
burning half smiles into the edges of your lips
catching my prayers in the roots of your teeth
cuz seeing all of this means nothing
if i cannot feel the way the air collapses
in our presence
when all the gods in the room realize
they were just taking time
saving our place
until we could find each other again
until our palms are resewn into this story
until our bodies are buried back into this ocean
until the atmosphere is released from you chest
and we remember what its like
to breathe