I wanted to tell you

I wanted to tell you how it was to float in the body-warm water and look up through the fig leaves and past the crisscrossing branches into the dark and glimmering sky--the stars, huge and heavy, seemed a little closer than the ripe figs, and if I'd wanted to I could have plucked one down and tasted sweet starlight. Maybe I did. I wanted to tell you what it was like to breathe the floral-diesel scent of this blue sky paradise where mad unicyclists and Hummers spin past perfect wild gardens on weekday afternoons, and to know instantly that all paths are possible. I wanted to tell you how pure and expansive every moment had been since I saw you last, because purity and immensity reminded me of the way it had always felt to be in any room where you were. I wanted to give you me, a gift wrapped in my warm articulate hands, so that you could also know that all things are still possible, that you are free. I tried, too, but I slipped from your hands (which had always been so much bigger and more powerful than mine). You sipped your coffee and I sipped my chocolate and we sat in our old favorite coffeeshop, and your hands (so small!) could not hold even a fig.

--by aamurusko, Berkeley, CA, 03/12/2005