Distance

I don’t want these week old envelopes,
pencil smudged writing too cramped to fit onto the page.
More traded journal entry than conversation,
too distant to be natural,
separated by miles of lonely road.
I want your voice,
your spontaneity,
want our words to spill together,
spoken as soon as they form in our minds.
And I don’t want these lifeless pictures,
frozen snapshots of memories that we don’t share, 
plastic portraits with no context to frame them
as we grow older and older, strangers each time we meet.
I want to see you,
catch your eyes with mine,
speak without words, without sounds,
with nothing more than a knowing smile.
I don’t want your phone calls,
don’t want you reduced to this broken, crackling sound,
don’t need to be reminded of the distance,
that all I can hear is this little plastic box,
that our lungs don’t share the same air.
When you tell me that you’re hurting,
I don’t want to offer you comfort over computer-screen texts,
don’t want to hold your lonely words in my lonely hands.
I want to hold you, 
want to hold your broken pieces,
want you to feel that comfort through a tight embrace, through the squeeze of a hand.
When you tell me that you’re happy,
I want to see your smile spread across your lips
see the laughter in your eyes.
I want it to be contagious, enveloping us,
want to be surrounded by the sea
instead of separated by it.
I want more of you than these artificial pieces.
But I can’t see you,
can’t hear you,
can’t hold you.
If only I could reach a little farther…