I was touched
when they passed.
I would never be the same.
It kept on coming
the sweet and gentle
the light ethereal touch
that I would be able to examine
so many years later
on the little pieces of paper
that would emerge from names and numbers
from the invisible that would be
given names and futures
specific locations and shapes
and all the true horrors
of fate and love and loneliness
and a past only partly remembered.
It was a multitude of eyes
that would make love to me
a choir that would tell me stories
of the sky and the gods
and their affections,
of mountain roads so rare
we would never
be able to find them.
They offered me
a complex world of perfection
and reconfigurations
at once true
and never possible.
I stood on a large rock
and I could still see them in the distance.
I let myself cry
Hoping to make myself remember.
I could feel fingers on my chest
on my belly
on my legs
on my crotch
on my forehead.
Fingers that weren’t there
fingers that could never have been
and never would be.
I could feel eyes
long gone and faded into nothing.
I could feel
the invisible circular tenderness
that rarely held on
to the thin
grasp of friends
and books and things
that were never truly present.
I stared at them
and I watched them
slide away into the
passing night
separating into parallel formations
into hands and music,
into tenderness
that became more and more distant
more and more dream-like
more and more a myth
to be forgotten
and discarded as a lie.
I was touched as they passed
I would never be the same.
