visiting hours

 

today
in the waiting room, waiting
with folded hands,

I have hovered above your head, silent
for interminable time.

salt climbs from under
your skin, your
not-quite breathing
breaths

there are things I have forgotten to tell you

I do not want to whisper to your sleeping lungs
rise, fall. I want your hands, laughing,

have forgotten how to speak out loud, hold
words on the tip of my tongue,
I hide anger in the tiger lilies on the sill,
press my cheek to the window,

rise, fall,
fog

I do not love the traffic
the liberal yellow taxi horns and crying
geese, Michigan, still gray

I want to hold you, cupped in the palm
of my hand. I want to be fierce in a
general direction

I hate the echo of comfortable shoes, the shadows
of brittle lights, I hate that
I will have to leave now,

and what I mean to say:
I love you,
breathing