Michael Mira

I can count the number of steps
it takes to get from my room
to your door without missing
a beat.

In a geospatial context
we´re not that far apart,
but the thread that connects
my wrist to yours is a tightrope
we dance on, and baby,
it´s about to break.

The distance between point A and B
can be measured in memories:
Christmas dinner at Carrabba´s;
fogging up my windows in the YMCA
parking lot; laying beneath you beneath
a sprinkler beneath the stars illuminating
the dark winding trail that came to
symbolize our history.

The distance between B and C
is measured in a foreign metric system.

Point C is a destination we may never reach together.
You and I are no longer parallel, and it´s hard to make
a correct calculation with this much space between us.

It seems we´re on separate islands, drifting in opposite directions.
Can you feel the tectonic plates crashing?

Maybe it´s my heart pounding my chest
like a husband punching the coffin of his beloved
sinking at five centimeters per second.
But we´re both here, alive and well, writing elegies
for a pile of failed attempts.

It´s always sad when two poets place
a final period on a co-authored sonnet,
but the inkwell is running dry,
and I´m afraid there aren´t anymore words
to add to this Gaudi-esque story we´ve built.

Not even a skilled wordsmith can build
a bridge made of apologies and "I love you"s
long enough to close the gap that time had carved.