Within one's voice are contained many whispers,
Opaque shadows of taller words—
Dulcet gales of intent, which
Illuminate a beginning and an end, but make intimately known
The distance between.
A whisper is not silent as a shadow is not forgotten and unseen.
It murmurs honesty without vestments;
It betrays no layers, and tells of no undertones;
It is height without its tower; urgent meaning
Augmented at a trembling zenith,
Burgeoning, smiling unto
Whetted and waiting ears.
The kindness enclosed within your softened, lid-fallen eyes will
Make each vesper worth so much more than
This wait turned savage yearning—
So much more
Than numbers, slipping at such heights, could ever
Hope to climb; ever more than words, feeble surrogates
Of true meaning,
Could ever hope to carry.
It is your distant look that
Waters at humanity's helplessly
Buoyed hope.
And thoughts cannot illuminate, and
Not even their
Coziest vestiges of truth—which
May shelter from
Storms of forgetfulness—are
So accurate
Even if,
As they say, there have
Never been words.
But I hear your whispers—
I feel the zephyrs
Pouring their tender beauty into
Tumescent veins; I hear
Direction resonate without tone, without wandering ambiguity.
It sinks beneath my skin, having been
Softly unsheathed from the fevering lips 'gainst my shoulder.
Your whispers—the height of your emotions—
Settle into the zenith I hold in my head:
It bears our names together, and
Our claims yet to be tread.