When I Love You

There is fool’s gold
in myself absorbed.
Frailty
in myself reflected,

in myself,
at whom I stare, rushed
and passionate and finally frozen.
Such futility in this self,

absorbed and dreaming. But there is relief
in the heart of outcasts, relief
in outcasts who have learned to love,
relief in leaving the dreamer behind.

Ambition was the measure of the gap
between reality and me,
dreaming through the distance
I had wandered.

Voice is the sound of me
arrived this day.
And the rich, bloody wave cresting in my chest,
that wish is my dying wish.

Until then, that we have separate rhythms,
that you inspect,
that you see far,
that you give chase,

that you sweat a different blood
is a joy and a bridge.
I am sane when I love you
and love others.

When I bathe in your laughter,
when I linger in your sight,
when we rest in each other’s prayer,
I am safely here.