Thin

The miles converge here.
The distances you covered
and the ones I traveled
have come together
in this dark place,
hidden in the long shadow
dusk makes when it crawls
toward night.
This is where we’ve come—
in this place
others have come for decades before us.

Near here lies buried a stewardess—
that’s what they were called
then
in 1963
when she and 42 others
fell from the sky
one stormy afternoon
outside Miami.
I think of her who—
let’s face it—
isn’t really here
at all, but somewhere else
we, in those moments of
fevered half-sleep
we ascend to in the night
long for and hope in
like naïve children
wishing for a happy ending.

And you and I also
here, and yet
we might as well
be in our distant places.
for I may sense you, but you—
you refuse to allow yourself
this easy pleasure.
You hope not in happy ending—
in that joy I hunt down
in long dark night like tonight.

I long for you!
just as I long for
the One who stands elusive
as the crescent moon—
thin as a thread of
silver embroidery—
which leans toward us
here
where everything converges.