can you hear me now? / I couldn’t find you.

1.

Can you hear me now?
If I speak with words like feathers.
Can you hear me now?
If I sing songs delicate as morning dew on spider threads.

Can you feel me now?
If I move in the same pace as a leopard
invisible, inevitable, near?
Can you feel me now?
If I kiss not only your lips but your soul.

Will you sit with me and breathe?
Will you speak with me like feathers,
and sing to me like drops of dew?
Will you walk on the cushions of your soles,
to not interrupt but gracefully join.

When all that we are
is neither yours nor mine
will you kiss my soul then,
as the world kisses itself awake?

And in being awake,
will you know me,
not apart from you,
but as the breath between our hearts?

2.

I couldn’t find you.
I couldn’t hear,
and I couldn’t feel you.
I couldn’t get to that place of intimacy,
that meeting point.

I couldn’t meet you
in all the ways I longed to.

Cracks everywhere.
like a landscape of dry desert,
like old paper that’s been folded too many times.

Holding on to the altar - in that sticky way prayer clings to the edges of defeat -
I’ve been talking to myself like a martyr to keep myself from hearing you ask:

“Are you ready to love yourself?”

Because humble as you are,
that’s your only question…

Defiant as I am (read: weary and done with running in circles),
I would now say my answer is yes.

Yes. I am ready.

I know a mirror lake.
I’ll meet you there.