In your next letter, I wish you’d say:

how you feel about me
going away.
Silent mouths are so hard to read.
Maybe you don’t have the strength to tell me out loud,
or maybe you claim too strong to let your weakness flow,
but I ask that you let your hand
utter the things you hold behind your teeth.

Does it pain you so?
I just want to know--
do you carry the same burden in your heart;
the one I first evaded
but you embraced?

Can you feel your chest melt?
Can you feel your own decay
from the essence of living
that threatens to decompose you from the inside out?

We stand on one end of a timeline;
do you feel the frigid air against your timid cheeks
as we take each inevitable step towards the edge?

I don’t mean for you to spill your soul across the page.
I just want to know.

I feel I already know the answer, but
I just want to hear it again
and again
and again.

I want it to whisper.
I want it to bellow.
I want it to praise.
I want it to confess.
I yearn to hear the chilling verses
you hold in your tongue.

I would catch them in a seashell and hold it up to my ear,
so the waves of the ocean would infuse with the sound of your voice,
and could follow me everywhere until I fell asleep each night.
I would capture them in a green glass bottle
and send it off to sea
so that when it washes upon another shore
whoever picks it up will know what love sounds like,
or if it happened to break on its journey,
at least the fish would know what beauties and pains lie above them.

Perhaps I say this because

I would recite to you endless verses.
I would practice my eloquence.
I would knit blankets with my words
just to keep you warm.

I love you more than the moon loves the tides.
The pull of my heart would make every wave the magnitude of a tsunami.
I love you more than the sun loves the water
when its rays hit the surface just right
and project a world of diamonds.
I love you
and I know that this is true,
honest,
but my ears, my eyes, my hands
hunger your words.

I just want to hear you say,
if nothing else,
“I know we’ll meet again.”