I hesitated in the kitchen
Expecting to see you in sunlight,
And you were there.
You were there graced by the blue of my imaginary sea.
You were never another statue,
Never another Galatea for me to shape.
Statues do not walk beside water
The way I knew you to walk.
For I was too immersed in breathing
The ritual of your wind-touched hair,
Fearing that you were almost gone.
Yet it is curious that your leaving
Did not empty me the way it would have
Emptied me when I was a young man.
I did not mean for you to go.
I did not want you to go—
Not on a morning filled with sunlight,
Not when we might have walked through the city together,
Not when I might have heard you singing
Or been absorbed into the possibility of your glance—
Not while I still needed words.