Birdsong

What did you say after my heart stopped beating? Ocean roar engulfed me; the tunnel black. When the light comes back, I am looking at you and me. You are bent over me, kissing my forehead, holding my hand. I cannot feel these actions. I can see the tears on your face but I cannot hear you weep. I hear only the ocean roar, which grows fainter by the second. How long before the blackness returns? I want to know what you said. I want to hear the words. I have no way to ask. I am leaving and I have no way to listen.

How beautiful the garden was that summer. All I wanted to do was trace the line of your naked curves with my fingers. You can watch poetry but you can never translate it to an action that is anything less than sordid and awkward. I never stopped trembling when I touched you, and you never held it against me. Surer hands than mine should have held you, hands that could have given you the gifts you deserved. Stars and birdsong. How beautiful the garden was, yet I could barely be troubled to look, my eyes never leaving you. No garden compares, no star, no birdsong.

So many things I wish I could say to you, but cannot: How beautiful you are. How I wish we could lie in bed and trace the lines on our bodies. How I long to see you in candlelight again. You loved candles. You lit them, maintained them, slipped around them like a whisper.

I am leaving, I am leaving.

Naked I sang a bridge for you. Naked you walked across it. Let us lie down here, you said, and I will write the birdsong on your back so that you will never see it and carry it with you always. What of mirrors, I asked, and ice and clear surfaces? They will not reflect the song, you said, it is for us alone. I have practiced this calligraphy since I first held a pen. Gently you pushed me face-down into the grass and began to write.

Do you believe in endless summers? The pen pushed gently into my skin.

We do not need to name the planets, you told me, it is enough that they are there. Later, I lay my head against your chest and listened to your heart. It is enough that it is there. Your fingers stroked my hair. We could be statues and this feeling could last forever. We could be planets. We will never need names.

And now I can no longer feel the weight of the birdsong embedded in my back. I trace your figure in the air with fingers I cannot see. I cannot find you.

Alone, the birdsong and candles gone. Alone, with nothing left to carry.