Notes

we taped a map above my bed labeled all the places
we will go. marked it up in ballpoint pen,
forging roads and pathways we’d travel
someday. i cradled japan delicately in one hand

and fit the curve of chile in the other: curled
like a question mark, curled like your smile.
wondering where does the pacific become the atlantic?
you said silly, they’re in love, that’s

what it’s like. when you touch someone so often
you sometimes forget where you end and they begin. and this
i knew to be true. i’m forests and you’re oceans
but i developed a taste for the saltwater

that thrums in your veins. your heart
is a seashell and when i held it up to my ear
i could hear the echoes. can hear them still,
the ocean song is not one to forget:

the water humming its secrets into the shore.
but waves are wonderfully fickle,
woefully fickle. you dreamed of sandstorms
and tsunamis to cup in your palms,

one-way roads and windswept hair
and headlights forging a way into the dark.
while you dreamed of a roadmap to everywhere
i dreamed of a roadmap to you. and darling

last january you visited. you held me
with your arctic eyes and said i never knew
tectonic plates could hurt this much. i said
oceans split up pangaea, you know. you nodded,

slid your fingertips across china and slipped your thumb
in the hollow of the mediterranean sea, between italy
and libya. a key into a lock, filling the spaces.
you whispered these used to fit together, once.

— DEAR WANDERER | love letters unsent #4 | paperharbors | (for @inkstay‘s prompt 48 “a traveller’s tale”)