Afar

AFAR

 

How odd to be rising sun to your settling moon

Hung upsidedown, juxtaposed

Me, the blue dot at 7 o’clock on Google map 

to your 2 o’clock, just an inch off 

the tippy tip of Newfoundland

We tread uneasy, adrift on this 

new found land of 

vast oceans that set us apart

 

I’d left but a week ago

so we keep from unravelling

the tapestry of our lives from afar:

I call, you sleep

You call, I sleep

knit one purl one 

drop three stitches

I’m forced to hang up, choked

on unspoken words edging sideways down my throat 

to stick like sour plums that go no further

 

Conversations, when we hit the bit

betwixt twilight and dawn, 

which used to glide unchoreographed

like paired swans on a jade green lake,

now clang like hollow tins

kicked by cats in the dead of night

lolling rolling down some forsaken alleyway

before the dustmen came.

We border on inanities:

Did you eat?

Is it cold or sunny?

Have you watered the plants?

If the WiFi wavers 

misconnections become accusations:

You missed which delivery?

Why haven’t you watered MY plants?

 

Then I cannot help but ponder our glue that might unglue

because we no longer breathe the same air

Me inhaling your exhale, and you mine 

when we dance

when we fight

or lie half asleep entwined, watching nightly Netflix with one eye 

Bare feet nestled beneath 

a TV blanket familiar with our warmth

now plod cold on entirely different ground

and separate ways

 

I unhinge with any distance 

whether near, middle or long

between us.

I miss your gaze roaming me, both

tender in caress

or harsh in rebuke

I miss your noises at work and at play

or your brooding silences which you wear at times 

like a thick cloudy hat all day 

 

I resent the sun who cannot burn us

the moon who cannot bathe us

both at the same hour

And I curse the seas that carry away in its swells

love so hard won, so very far from its home