Letters to Someone I've Yet to Meet


The other day when you noticed the way the pine trees gently inclined towards each other
and said something about how mutual benefit is not the same as love I wanted you in a way
that was mutually assured destruction. I knew I would love you down to the dust we'll both
become, and I how like a pine I was then, sure, strong, ever-green, and burning hot. 


I cannot imagine your eyes but I know you will stare steadily when I describe how I am not afraid to hurt, to break, to go. You will already be doing these things and your hands will be cracked and rough from the work. You will have built and rebuilt cities and I will come with a bucket of cool water and offer you a drink.


We will meet when I am naked of all the fears from before. It will be when I have hollowed
out my belly of expectations and when love has become more than a silhouette against a horizon I keep very far away. It will be when disappointment is but a path I've walked, when solitude keeps a chair by to my bed and sings me songs. You will not begrudge him his place because you will have your own paths, your own singers of songs. 


You will pour coffee with a strength in your fingers that makes me want to break over you
like a wave, and you will notice the egg-white matte of the predawn sky and say how like a canvas it is, waiting to be painted.