There is so much I would tell you

if there were time, if you had time.

I would tell you how the trees are shedding their raiment,

their leaves scattered across the turf

like the cast offs of careless teenagers.

Or how, last night, my heart briefly swelled in my chest

as I pondered the overwhelming beauty of the world

alongside the inevitability of suffering

that is the birthright of the living,

as constant as the velvet darkness

that gathers herself around every solitary star.

I would tell you how you are to me:

a silent companion, kindly but distant, like a ghost,

and how I cannot pretend that you are here,

but also, how you are never fully gone.

But it is not possible to tell you these things;

the distance is too far;

I see through the mirror dimly, or not at all.

So instead I watch the steam curl off my neighbor’s roof

in the morning sun, straining for a glimpse

of that penumbral confluence where air and water merge into one.