Sometimes the horizon seems so small,
hidden by omission, by eyes that don’t want to look.
Sometimes you seem to be tempting around the edges of fate,
like a bird too wary to get close to the hand that feeds it.
The hand that means well, but you can never quite be sure.
You told me about it once, and maybe there’s something to your theory
that our world ceases to exist when our eyes close,
replaced by the phosphenes you used to mistake for stars.
When I open my eyes the world blooms before them
just as if it was there all along, but I can never quite be sure.
Forgetting how to form words is a favourite past time of mine,
just like it used to be making sand castles, because yes,
I remember those days too.
There’s a subtle undercurrent to your gaze when you ask me
about them, back when words flowed in torrents,
simple and easy and unfettered.
They were the days of unadorned comprehension,
when the reach of thought wasn’t held back by the inexplicable.
You didn’t know me then, and yet you say you can remember them,
because they were days that belonged to everyone.
That undercurrent contains all the words I lack now,
and I wonder how you managed to wrest them from my grasp
so effortlessly, and I wonder if you’re ever likely to give them back.
If I had to describe you with three words they would be:
ephemeral, transient, fleeting.
And I know you would laugh because they all mean the same thing.