xx

So often with you I would stop
	my words and offer my hands:
	arms low, wide apart.
		I have nothing more to give,
		but, see, I have taken nothing.

So we did not speak for a sunny year,
	and I gave my words freely,
	told by others how highly you prized them.
		Instead of shaking hands, I drew people into my arms,
		smiling, inevitably, at you across the room.

So we do not speak at all.
	I lose my words in the mouth of another
	who remembers most days to return them.
		My hands are full of the sand of a new city,
		with burns from candles I no longer keep lit.

-Included in the Poetry Leaves installation, May 2017.