a prose poem

The early-dark of this Northern autumn finds me writing, my legs crossed beneath me on the cushions of my sofa-bench, my feet not touching the floor, not touching the world, just as I did as a child. The floor is the ocean; it is outer space and must not be touched or trod upon -- and by not touching that floor, I am free in these moments from the real, from caging expectations. I am free to think of you, free to write you into myself like the final rhyme of an unfinished couplet. I am free to stand in the void and not be alone. I am free to encompass the suns and the galaxies, to present them to you as a bouquet of nuclear flowers. I am free in those moments, those moments, to be whole again.