blues (for john)

feeling lonely on the beach an arm's length away from you,
the ocean a color i have never seen before,
i can't imagine there's anything out past the sky and sea
and the place they meet--
all those dust motes in the mouth of the universe,
yawning open.

but you say
if i held a magnifying glass to a leaf,
i'd see tiny leaves within it,
and a hundred within each of them,
and on and on,
all their little veins stretching out to sea and sky
like our hands in the darkness,
blind to the galaxies just under our dirty fingernails,
the matted roots of cities
clinging to the insides of our eyes.

and what would thought look like magnified a thousand times?
i wish i could hold a magnifying glass to my loneliness.
would i see just me, palm open, at the edge of the ocean,
trapped within my heart,
within my heart,
within my heart,
like russian dolls?
or would it flow,
like air between us,
water boiling,
honeycombs of currents rising and falling
like breaths,
or half-kisses
ferns still opening,
their tips curled under,
spiralling like toes in the sand.

would loneliness include us both
in its infinity?
the sea and sky and 2 near strangers, old friends still unfurling,
a kaleidoscope of skin and blues.

even now i wonder how much i have known you
through your absences,
the way the sea has carved the earth and in these carvings lives its history.
the way they say that cold is an absence of heat.
and i wonder, is there any such thing as an absence of sky?
and what would it look like, magnified?
maybe the stars that burn when they fall,
like cigarettes,
onto the sand.

they say we've burned holes in the sky,
and i wish i could spin my thoughts into string
and weave a new sky
but then we'd never get the chance to feel its absence.
under a magnifying glass, it looks just like loneliness.
like reaching for words that are not yet born,
their syllables unspiraling.

i would like to see your memories under a magnifying glass,
all the places you have been,
till the deserts are just grains of sand,
and in the grains of sand are deserts,
and your lovers' skin
and my skin,
are all just lines that run like rivers
into spirals at the fingertips.

here is where time curls in on itself,
and i have known you for a week,
and also for forever.

in the palm of your hand,
i trace the patterns of your silences,
the contours of your history,
like your body lying next to me,
or its absence,
like the blues on the sand.