We say get back in touch. Or stay
in touch. You know how easy,
even touching it is to say.
As if the words confirmed,
made certain, almost
a believer of us.
As if it were possible.

And aren’t we touched?
Knowing as we must
the divide between us.
The unbearable
distance we close upon,
but cannot close.

And weren’t we
giddied by it once,
though, too late, appalled.
Like children grown to parent grief,
after some necessary mischief
has sent us to our room
the lonely hours to pass.
Gave thought its awful math
in halving:

of half, and half again of that,
from here to there,
to any wall the house provides
on the way to the unreachable.

That nearer, then nearer,
that never gets us there,
so learn to live, our lives,
without.

By thinking
back to what we might have had,
entire, instead of what we got
by halves, having all
our lives together lived apart.