I awaken in the misty hours before dawn
and before the first glimmer of lucidity
stirs my senses; you are already filling
all the spaces of my life.
Your unknown face: conjured
as a puzzle, from bits relayed in words,
but fashioned, mostly, from parts
of other faces I have loved.
Your voice is heard again,
resurrected from the storage shelves of memory,
its softness, its dark and infinite warmth
-textured almost like a touch-
calls my name… I tremble.
Then, surges that longing of ages:
the unending ocean of desire
swelling in waves
stretching its tentacles across space
to reach your shores…
In the secret chambers of my mind I whisper
your name, softly,
look into your imagined face,
and your imagined hands reach out to me.
Your electrifying touch travels across
the entire topography of my form,
visiting and revisiting those places
where my longing calls them…
My body convulses at the inevitable joy:
the tenuous links between body and soul
are severed and I escape into an open space
of love unendurable.
I wonder if at this hour,
in another distant darkened room,
you were startled by the call of my heart,
awakened and listened for a phrase…
And watched the shadows dancing on the wall
expecting my form to become flesh;
and when it did not
you mourned, as I do, this unborn child,
this love always potential:
condemned to purity essential.