I have been trying to write a poem about you for weeks. I imagine your name on the dedication page. I imagine the way you don’t look at me when I hand it to you. I imagine you reading it aloud, alone, in your bedroom that I have never seen. The work of my heart is largely one of fiction.

I am clinging to a cup of coffee, my limbs are tangled in the door. I look at the place where you were. I am falling apart. The bird in the head is making new song, new song. I try to look at the counter, the sidewalk, the outlet hidden near the ceiling. 

Every room holds secrets, blossoming out from the depths of them, ivy unfurling in bright light unnoticed. My body is displacing secrets with every movement. You see them, because you see. I am learning to look. 

Learning the ways of silence is its own method of speech. My mouth is filling up with lake, with wanting and inarticulate touch. I will code and code and quiet. I will let and let and listen. The mystery is worth the mystery.