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To You Again

Again this morning my eyes woke up too close

to your eyes,

their almost green orbs

too heavy-lidded to really look back.

To wake up next to you

is ordinary. I do not even need to look at you

to see you.

But I do look. So when you come to me

in your opulent sadness, I see

you do not want me

to unbutton you

so I cannot do the one thing

I can do.

Now it is almost one a.m. I am still at my desk

and you are upstairs at your desk a staircase

away from me. Already it is years

of you a staircase

away from me. To be near you

and not near you

is ordinary.

You

are ordinary.

Still, how many afternoons have I spent

peeling blue paint from

our porch steps, peering above

hedgerows, the few parked cars for the first

glimpse of you. How many hours under

the overgrown, pink Camillas, thinking

the color was wrong for you, thinking

you'd appear

after my next

blink.

Soon you'll come down the stairs

to tell me something. And I'll say,

okay. Okay. I'll say it

like that, say it just like

that, I'll go on being

your never-enough.

It's not the best in you

I long for. It's when you're noteless,

numb at the ends of my fingers, all is

all. I say it is.

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