Future:

Your face came up

in mirror-image, spun out of a crystal ball

like a five-cent trick; only so real as I could make you.

Only so real as the hope I carried in my heart.

Lucky for you (and me)

I'd lugged at least your measure

in desire about for—oh—a decade or so

in the depths of that very same heart.

Beside it I kept a weak fatalism,

The kind that could be tossed off easy,

like a prayer with one half-open eye.

There would be no angels, sure, but I held out for you:

And now you're here. Real. I could kiss your eyes

but I'd scare you. I'd scare you.

I don't want you to hear the low roar of real silence,

it's rough tongue, how it wears the soul.

Know only my love. Know exuberance. And love me, and give me more,

and I will return it ten-fold.