how do you live, my lover, with the sky in your blood like this? is breathing like flying? i look and the whole broad air beyond is the blue magic of your eyes.

so much bigger than love, you know, it's gotten under my heart and it grows there, aching, needing you.

that someone who knows the sky so well should still look into my eyes and see breadth, depth--

that one such as you who has spun in naked empty space and not known fear, should still take up my hand and be frightened for my sake--

it seems that i can feel the clouds against my outstretched hands. so very cold, ice crystals suspended in midair, each one a frozen dream. i feel as if i am learning you all over again, when we were so tremulously new to one another. and yet so familiar, even from the very beginning.

you have always been in my blood, my lover.

so i suppose the sky has always been with me. for your sake. something so deeply blue and buoyant would have to be yours. and should you gift it to me, i would again be speechless with love for you.

but today i am walking in the air, without you. flying alone through your sky and dreaming, as ice-pale and diaphanous as clouds dream, of you.