Devastatingly Beautiful!

The Space Below Us

(To Roland)
 
The last time we stood together—
before it all broke,
before the silence was brand new again—
we were leaning over the railing,
an atrium of fresh empty floors cascading beneath us,
looking over the void in the same direction,
at the stage, pining for the same thing
that was singing over the music and underneath our reborn hunger.

The pauses that we cloaked with the strumming of our fingers
grew wider than we knew what to do with.
And every now and then the familiarity would drop
like a baby on its head—with a round thud
and the absence of a scream.

It was then that we first let our names
grow distant to our ears again
and the rest of the sentences to our selves.
It was there that I noticed the hair sprouting between your knuckles
and tried to imagine the taste of their brown skin on my lips.
And in that strangeness I almost loved you again—
the shade of your nascent beard,
the wickedness in your eyes,
and the look across the space below us,
always racing to where it shall never rest again…