Broken Lantern

Loving you
is sickly vague of detail.
page after page
I flip, reading the
ancient script
of an empty book.

You are not the canvas
and I do not paint.
Great soul mates
never are alike
you might say,
but together
we are here at last,
in the mural
eyes focused
in permanence
on the same empty
space of a room
looking back at us,
and no one
but the children
in the café
knows we’re lovers.

In a nauseous way
like one might feel
nostalgic towards
the planet earth,
after days or nights
lost at or in
space or sea
kissing the dirt
through invisible bars;
the imprisoning
freedoms of gravity.

The archeological disappointment
of perhaps having found
everything that was
meant to be hidden
leaves me digging
through my dreams,
searching for a word
without a language
or a language
without words.

And like a
broken lantern
flickering on
at the bottom
of the ocean,
I wake up
grasping your hand
like a glass of water
spilled across the desert,
which sounds
like a shy cat
playing a broken piano