Distance between me and you

Would be zero if we were interested

In becoming untangled from our fears

Not so much interested, but capable

Because the capacity for the growth of imagination

Must exist for the value of interest to be coded before being defined

Then, and only then, is it examined and embraced with mutuality

Clear as fingernails

Better yet, if someone before me

Had given you the chance to pour out your heart

Into the passion of holding your red claw

Between the line creases; brown inside of your palm

If your family had told you that your drawings were colorful

If they kissed your cheeks more than yelling in your ear

If you felt the ray of sun from your bedroom window

Before brushing your teeth before school

If your mother was getting 63 cents more to match

The dollar of her colleague, who works less, plays more, and looks pale

If your father was allowed to steer his instincts

Away from the impulse of seeking entitlement

That looks true, but feels false

If your teachers taught you to explore the way

Your footprints can catch up to the gifts in the forest of your purpose

Defined by your genealogy

Smelled in the scent of that butter

Chillin out on your nails

On your tonsils

Which would be great to explore

After we take a walk from the cafe on Spuistraat in Amsterdam

My lips caress your own

Needing your ice

Lying beneath your words

Searching for your spice

I sense it

I am stimulated by it

But I know that I cannot have it

That's not my duty

I am not designed by the Earth to do that

Not because I am not capable

But because that is not important to you

When you think of me more than once

In your department meeting

I dream that you want to feel

That I can hold you in the desert

When the wind stills

As the dune covers our eyesight

When we crawl on its granules and grains

To the pier, then on a boat where the blue ocean massages our eyelids

After the plane ride to Beirut

Before zigging in the crowded alleyways of Prenzlauer Berg

Tight enough to make your goosebumps notice

Soft enough to have them dream with us