the space between us

it pumps - like a train’s beat that
flutters between lips, or that narrowing sun
that squeezes its way through winter parisian clouds.
it is wednesday night, and i was running toward
the dream of a week in ireland. i was excited by
the prospect of wildness of cities - of the hammered miles
that would diversify the year.
i know, it was only a distraction, but what else could i do
when the wind demanded all our directions:
towards north.

no, i will not find love, i told the wind.
only a moon with no home.
it is not love i will find, because
i have no limb. because i only know…
Flow. the swinging sun lights up my eyelashes, 
shapes my sharp wild hair, it runs back,
it gestures as i speak my foreign talk, my voice
watering one stony place or another.
sometimes the land takes away my words and
i am left, crying for stillness with no mind
or mermaids or sea. in those moments
i thought i knew death. but no death would come.