My love – we are too afraid.
I have a plan.
Drive me to your mother’s house
and hand me the photo album
“Ages 0-1.”
Place the collection of you
in my hands.
Let me flip through
the bouquet of moments
that weave a living portrait –
your purposeless motion;
the tides of emotional hues
always rushing over your face;
the simplest shapes,
the bluntest strokes;
the fresh, crisp blueprints
of the way you wrinkle in disgust,
in laughter;
the way you open
to let out the howl
that is the root of every sound
you will ever make,
the heart of your wanting.
You, before
your mind sharpened enough
to slice your world
into thing, other thing.
Safe, unsafe.
You, me.
Can you remember?
When you cried,
everything was crying.
When your mother’s lips brushed
your cobweb hair,
everything was love.
I will watch your present face,
looking for a ripple in the veil,
a stirring memory
of when you were so close
to infinite.
I will remember to love you there.