I Want to Listen to Your Absence

I want to listen to your absence

I want to listen to your absence

The way I listen to the night

The way the dark somehow 

Invites a deeper listening

I want to hear, for instance

The way silence fills in

Where your voice has been

Or the way the room seems to know itself

By the pound of missing footsteps

And in this way, I find you

Where I cannot find you

I am thinking of how the night opens up

Between the calls of the owl

And how I listen in that interval

Not only with my ears, but with my skin

I want to listen for you with my lungs

As if every breath is attentive

To the syllables of grief, of love. 

I want my heart to angle in

To hear what the silence has to say

I don't want to hear what I most want to hear

I want to hear what is really here

I want to listen and learn from the listening

I want to hear what is true

I want to listen into your absence

And lean into it the way I lean into the night

Something so much larger than me

Something familiar and always new

Something so present, yet unable to be touched

Something I am still learning to love