Open Wide
Scroll
The Poem
Open Wide
She is out there.I have always known thisthe way you know things that cannot be provenbut live in the body as certainty —the specific ache of a personwho exists somewhere in the pink lightof a world that keeps her just beyond the distancewhere finding becomes possible.
Her arms are open.The dress moving.The hair caught in somethingthat might be windor might be the motion of a personturning toward you finally —and I cannot tell if she is saying come to meor if I am saying it to heror if the saying goes both waysacross the distance that has always beenexactly this wideand exactly this the problem.
Arms open
Love is hard to come by.Wanting is painful.
She is out there with her arms openand I am here with my arms openand the distance between usis the whole of what I am trying to tell you.
Surrender.Not resignation. Not defeat.The hard-won grace of a personwho has learned that wanting is also a form of having —that she is most fully herself in the pink light of the not-yet,that the yearning keeps her presentin a way that finding her might not.
She is out there.The dress moves.The arms stay open.
The dress moving
And I am here —wanting, which is painful,which is also proof that she is real,that the one who got away never fully goes —she stays in the pink light of the almost,the nearly,the not-yet —arms open,and I am here arms open,on opposite sides of the same wide world —and the distance between us is the whole poemand the poem is everything I have to give her.
I give itopenly.Arms out.
The way she stands in the pink light
that holds her
the way I cannot.