I write to keep you safe, captured in these words
I keep you leaving traces and love’s truths
You live on in my mind more vivid than a ghost
In my writing haunting me
I wish that you could see
So you’d know how it is
You might hide beside voiced letters smaller than a silent letter will
I can stop to sound your spaces, trace your whispered words with my lips
You might slide inside a vowel or curve your body as some numbers do
I can watch your dashes in the hide-and-seek of quiet pauses, too
It’s all right, I know, my words won’t contain
All the hopes and dreams I wish you’d wished with me
We had our chances then but now that time is passed
And no poem can make it right
Try hard as I might
At the end there’s only silence and no you
Lanning Lee 