you were a stranger to me

and yet I was bound to you

through blood

and bone

I felt your absence

absence that became a presence

within me

the presence of silence

unthought, unspoken

a vast space

like a starless expanse

yet within this cold

forbidding space

a sprout

white with fragile flower

sheltered from itself

by the love that met your eyes in mine

something was there

something between us

and young, I yearned to

cross the distance

to behold that part of you

that was mine.