We Will Have Our Little Lives

May it be delightful my house,
From my head may it be delightful,
To my feet may it be delightful,
Where I lie may it be delightful,
All above me may it be delightful,
All around me may it be delightful.
--Navajo Chant

I wish you delight. When you wake up, when you sleep. When I am there or not there. Yes, we will live our little lives. I've got potatoes in the oven and a steak defrosting on the counter. You have your beer and chat in your little piso Boliviano. I watch TV on my computer, after the day of writing and teaching is done. You watch it in a room I can’t imagine, though I try...stocking it with random Germans whose faces and voices I do not know. We live our little lives. With clear eyes and full hearts, we can’t lose. Almost four full moons between us now. I’ve had one haircut and I’ll have another. I’ll grow a beard between now and when I see you again. And I feel so small and big in the in-between. In between seeing you. In between poems. In between the sound of your voice and the sound of your voice. And we each have our day’s little insanities. The company projects that you dropped down into from another continent and made your own. My lecture on Godzilla, his death and disintegration. Yeah, we live our little lives. Drink from the Lethe each night and begin again each day. Each morning I wake up without you, here in my little life. I told you to name your apartment. Though I have yet to name mine. I will name it in this poem. Right now it feels like it wants to be called the apartment that misses you. Are we a team? Do you know what it’s like to be a team? No, this is not the poem to talk about teams. That’s for a time when we have more than hope and waiting. We do our lines and have our days. With clear eyes and full hearts. And I feel a little empty inside, it’s an emptiness that fills me. I take it like a pill when I wake up and remember; it gets me through the day, this little empty feeling. And you are young. And I am young, too, in my way. And we don’t know yet just how we will love each other. Will we take our little lives and make them one big life? That’s what I’m calling this place, “The little apartment of big life.” It wants to hold you, with every arm I have. It wants to see what we can make together.