Distance

Imaginary fingers
run gently through my hair
as I fix a lazy stare
at the table, once laden, now bare.
The heating pipes knock, hiss
and warm the silent air,
in the night beyond the only kiss
the wind upon the branches bare.  

Imaginary hands miss
my tight and aching back,
hardened by the days of quiet labor,
dragging the alienating sack;
hands instead that brush the sand
from a hardened pillow
on a warm night in an alien land.  

The soldier and I had parted
in the possible of an autumn evening,
one meal not sufficing, not enticing,
a gust of words to loosen
the silent weight that years create.