Geography Lessons

To Katy
 
I sat there on the steps
absorbing the rest of the day,
waiting to see you for the first time.
The sun was dissipating with the distance,
turning the sky into a fake purple screen
soon to be erased.
And the cold was seeping in me.

But you were real.
From behind the hill,
huge eyes, and a tweed the color of the sky,
and a silence only the night knows.
How could you live up to your self
when you are so big?
But you do.

Always the night.
That density of the air
when she sang of candles and roses
and voices bouncing off the walls.
You could smell the humidity then
before it collected under your nose.

We were young, and she was young,
and the country was young, too.
The geraniums were blooming from ear to ear,
forced from the ground with too much determination.
I was just starting to know the night.

So how did we get to this?
Sitting each in his couch
on opposite sides of the room,
slicing the silence between us
like a brie,
gathering the distance like dust bunnies
under the coffee table.

When did the night turn so cold?
It was always silent,
but even the silence sounded different then.

Now you're gone
back to words,
silent, but loud,
smoothing away the folds in the distance.
Sometimes it's not a matter of geography.