The Offering of Incapacity

I cannot touch you...
Yet how do I feel the warmth
of your lips, day after day?

A thousand times I touch your chest—
Is this what love is?

I drown in the deep embrace
of an invisible memory,
sink into your breath...
My sleepless eyes stain crimson,
these forbidden hours slip away in neglect...
What kind of love is this?

Just as I would—
someone holds your body
in fierce, wild passion...

That someone is not me,
I cannot be!
Is this too my failing?

No one has searched for me,
as if I never learned to hold close...

Yet how do I keep you safe
in my dreams—
even amid such crowding anguish,
tenderly preserve you, always?

Can this not be called—love?

With bewildered, fragile heart
I surrender myself at your feet...
Does this fulfill what love is?