I have written of you so many times:

I a gull and you the wave,

the dance where the horizon splits us.

I have eulogized you as you live

for all the selves that split off behind you:

I witness your journey.

I stand in your shade.

I have read you, too. I have read

the stories of your stepfather, and read

the bloodlines of your escape.

I have read the lines you wrote

of snow on someone’s plate, of nosebleeds,

of the aching silence that remains.

Is it secret-sharing if neither of us

acknowledges the tracts that bind us?

For everything we have read and written

and reread and revised, there is not a single line

of poetry or prose

or late night emails or drunken texts

that could wrest you

from your corner

of my heart.