“I wish I could know what you’re thinking.”

I’ve finally figured it out.
When we’re quiet and you don’t realize
that I’m staring, in wonder, awestruck, amazed,
and you ask but I never knew how to explain:
but it’s like when I hear something beautiful
and my whole body aches from the inside out
and there’s this primal need to keep the sound
so bad that I look for a way to make
words tangible just so that I can
lock them in my room and never let them go.
It’s like I’ve found the recipe for perfect
and I don’t want to share.

So here:
You’re my poetry.
strong, precise, beautiful,
worth every breath and every heartbeat
and I will recite you until my lungs deflate
and my voice rejects me.
I will translate you into a hundred different
languages just to learn that I love you no matter what.
and then, when I can speak no longer,
I will copy you word for word,
again and again, on every surface I can reach
until my fingers break and that’s when I’ll
find someone who will read you to me, day and night,
until I am deaf. And when I can’t speak
or write or hear, I will have you tattooed on my body,
permanently so I can feel it deep beneath my skin.
And when I am old, desperate to see God
just to thank him, in person, for you
I will pass you down, to our daughters and sons
and grandchildren, in this leather-bound book
full of our stories and we will live forever that way.

~ by Jessica Phillips on June 19, 2009.