Modern Romanticism

What time
did we see numbers,
failing us?
It was that infinite
horde of gleaming stars
we aimed to count,
but felt the sky coming down
to create the floods at our feet.

Through the deep
of limited tunnels,
we explored where we
were vast, holding ourselves
together, while dust
falling from our shoulders
kept rewinding us.

Kisses blocked the sun,
darkened our scenes,
for moments when we
found it necessary
to come undone,

but not to the time,
when our hands would be
pointed towards sunrise
and sunset,

a before and an after,
a time for hope, and a time
for when water will race
through a tunnel we can’t trace.

I lifted you
from gray highways,
sealing you in a chest
where gold was
bringing you to rest
in love’s comfortable gravity,

and I never heard you say
anything about
another timeless necessity.

I want to rewind you, to give you
the railroad crossings.
I want you to see where I am lost,
where I am being drained,
losing tears, becoming the sands
in the hourglass, beyond the hourglass
figure that I cannot embrace.