Untitled 294.

I wrote about him
because I could catch him,
I could put my finger on him,
trap him under my thumb,
and it was easy,
there was nothing I couldn’t 
capture with clips
and phrases of words,
the way he moved across the floor
in the morning,
how his teeth slanted to the left 
a little bit,
that punch-drunk feeling I used to get 
every time 
he’d disappoint me.

I cannot write about you.
I have tried, and you have asked 
me, but the words are stuck inside 
my fingertips,
or the letters are jumbled 
somewhere underneath 
my lungs, and the more you 
hold your chin in your fist 
and watch as I dry off 
from getting out of the shower,
the more confused they become.

You are intangible,
something that escapes me most
when you are right here,
and if I were fluent in every human
language, my vocabulary would 
still fall short
of the sounds you make 
when you’re finally sleeping,
or the way your hands
don’t have to promise 
they’ll hold me
tomorrow.