Miras

I felt you reaching out to me one night. Or was it day? To stroke me just where time led you. It's still too hard for me to reach back, cup myself to fill your hand. God bless the resurrection that is this breath. But it does not give us a longer moment together. For we are walking in different directions. Our nine steps to eternity. Write me something in one of those tongues yet to be heard. They say there will be no water in the future. Twenty-five years and this place will be dry. Do you already know the name of that world? Tell me now so I may tell it to them, konsole them, as we say in our language, so that they may not see your still body as ruin or attach to my presence any more consequence than it deserves. For they have yet to discover that unlike you, I'll never make a sound they'll understand. I'll never see a thing in their world. My mother will reject me. My father will cry over me. Ras la fini, they'll say. The line has been cut. The race has been lost. Speaking of their single thread of lineage as though it were an entire nation. They will speak of you my whole life. So we should have more than this instant as I enter and you exit. Tell me quickly. What am I to teach them? What am I to learn?