I Am A Writer

I wish you were here

simple as that

soft as that

a wanting that sits behind my teeth

and at the beginning of every poem

my yearning waits

at the beginning of every draft

a quiet ache I no longer argue with

I am a writer

which means I fall in love in footnotes

in asides

and you are written

into the places most people skip

traces of you are found between each line

and on every dog-eared page

penciled into margins

soft enough to miss

permanent enough

they are impossible to erase

I write toward you instinctively

as if the future is already decided

and I am just learning

how to arrive there

everything I’ve created was touched by you

from the sleeves of the protagonist’s lucky red sweater

to how they sneeze too loudly on purpose

If someone reads closely enough

they will find you everywhere

all of my work

was co-created by loving you.