for Barbara Ford
We sit on the couch in the low lamplight
and talk for hours about the heart,
its longing to know and be known.
I watch your hands as you speak, how
your long fingers dance. And sometimes,
my eyes catch on a moth amusing itself
at the edge of the room, content in shadow.
We are both well aware that pain
can also be a blessing, that just because
something is not going right doesn’t mean
it is wrong. There are problems
we will never solve, but tonight, it is not
about the solving of things, it’s about the feeling
of them, the willingness to lean over the edge
of the well-lit world, the thrill of fluttering
in the darkness together.