You are sleeping when I come home.
The cat stirs from her nest,
butts her head against my ankle,
her motorboat purr the loudest sound
in this sleeping house.
The bedroom door always creaks
and I hope it will not wake you,
even though I know by now
that when I strip off my clothes
and crawl into bed beside you,
you will stir. A murmured hello
in the dark, fingers finding a hand
in the dark.
When I wake, you are gone.
We converse in notes and memos.
A scrawled poem, the sketch of a heart,
sticky-note I Love You taped to
a laptop cover, to the bottom of
a bowl of keys, artifacts traversing
the gulf between our waking hours.
This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.
