My senses doubled by the traffic
of small things. Doubled over by moment's
waving their arms in me -- now now --
Stilled and unleashed, I am recalling and
clashing against the presence
with all my wish and memory revising
a boy who ... a man -
and I was something from a song for him while we
wrestled and becalmed within our small city of moods.
An ache that grew and fell with my pulse. A collapse
of the stillness, a feeling, always,
that there was something I had to do; an overturned
leaning towards departure. His or mine. Either
would be hard to accept.

What is adjacent to love besides love? I do nothing.
I just appear. And it's unclear whether he used me as
a lens to focus the light or a darkness to obliterate it.
I don't know what happens to me in another's heart.
We invented strands of harmony, stole some chords,
slashed the limbs from classic love stories
to rebuild them as our own.

What is adjacent to love? In our dualist kingdom, can it stand
of its own without opposition? Neither hate
nor fear step beyond its gentle compass.
I heard once that the opposite of love was indifference.
Perhaps that's close. I fear it.

Can you waste your life on a gift? I fumble with who would want or
even what's received. I search for a fragment lost --
a sketch of faceless remorse and 'what if' and
the formlessness where
everything has a purpose, just before it dissolves
into narrow shadow.
There is nothing adjacent.