Stargazing

To be lost and to have lost
Such a slight difference in semantics
Spans experiential orders of magnitude

To seek or to find
Lost in a sea of strangers
Small cities pulsing to these rhythms

To relate those tones
Sounds of PA systems
Cheering crowds in abandoned Theme Parks

To the passing touches
Shared hazily in the dead of night
Sleeplessness bred with anticipation

A sweaty, lazy day spent skipping work
Dreading the cross-country drive and uncertain
Outcomes of distance and time and space

Shared wonder at a connection
Unlike no other we’d ever felt
So brief and overwhelmingly deep

Staring into your eyes
And feeling your soul
Waking others in the process

Unexpected
Spell-binding
A sentimentalist’s dream

Wishing to go back
To that day or any of the minutes
Desperate to relive them

The distance spanning
Between those moments
And these desires ever-growing

Thousands of miles
And untold existences in between
Unknown yet so painfully present

The space between conversations
Lapses between laughs and smiles
How it carves itself into my chest

Emptiness returns
To fill that space, humiliation
At yet another failed attempt to love

Telling friends and parents
It was a false alarm, the girl in Kansas
Might have only been a fantasy in real life

Cursing changes
I can’t quite place
Guesswork at what separates hearts and souls

To go from promise
And ecstatic futures to dark
Sullen disappointment

Fumbling to understand
What one can do from world’s away
Or how there can be nothing to do

Read receipts weigh
On the mind, lack of responses
Build a new sort of anxiety

Things don’t seem fine
The future fades
Along with aspirations of a greater intimacy

Wondering now what you knew
Whether you were sad to leave
Or sorry I didn’t know it would end so soon

Thoughts drifting through the days
Hopelessly away from this life
And toward fleeting caresses and kissing your neck

While you moan and dig fingernails
Into my arms and back, cursing pleasure
And muttering my name

Locked eyes giving way to goofy smiles
And loving, tender kisses, which give way
To intense rekindled ecstasy

It sweeps over me
And I’m drawn back into despair
The thought that I’ve discovered a new loss

The cruelty of life seems evident
In how hard I’ve tried to find you and finally did
Only to have you wander wordlessly away

Suddenly no reply
Suddenly no photos no sound of your voice
In the middle of the night before trying to sleep

Shame at feeling so lost
Over a false discovery
Made by a weary adventurer desperate for a new homeland

Unable to reconcile
The surety of our hours together
With this certainty that they have passed

Struggling to handle
Such a remote isolation as this
No way to confide meaningfully

To share with another
The depth of this perceived loss
The extent of this water crushing me

To be lost and to have lost
To be losing and having lost
To kneel before magnitudes I can’t fathom

The sea of strangers rages on
The swells unrecognizably arhythmic
And this struggle to be lost continues

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