I like you better across the Pacific Ocean
sealing yourself into letters and e-mail attachments.
I can return your love with paper and postage.
Bruises in my mind grow fainter,
and words fade
to memories
of words.
My dream is to wake this morning
and get up on the side of reality
I make while asleep.
We would be constructed
from a selection of sugar-coated memories
rearranged at will.
Two slender silk roses
unfading like lovers
embracing at the end of a movie.
I miss the you of our good times,
though my fiction writing hands
cannot traverse time to rewrite our lines
in the chapters already completed,
which claim and reclaim
dark stains on our past
arranging themselves
like a proof table;
the result of our chemistry experiment
will scald
no matter how many times
we measure ourselves and try to fit
into the same relationship;
d i s t a n c e
must be maintained.
