he said, "i might see you every day, but you're only present half the time."

i laughed and hit his arm, "what?? then where am i the other half of the time?"

he shrugged, "la la land."

strange, when i think about it.
how much of someone else do we really have within our grasp?

i dream about you but it's not really you. it's a figment of you, of you from me. when i see you online, it's just an online version of you in a dark inventive space and not you. on the phone, it's something that sounds like you but isn't really you. you're lost amidst the cracks and hisses of white noise. even the text messages are yours but not really yours too- mechanical black alphabets on a bright white screen.

in person you're here but not here, you might slip away and follow a train full of thoughts up the jade green mountains into a cloud of silvery smoke. i might decide to leave you there and drown in pages of words and sheets of blankets and pillows even if you do reach out to take hold of my hand.

there are so many different types of you and i walking around this planet, reaching inside and grappling with ourselves and with each other, trying to meet somewhere, anywhere, trying to figure out what is mine and what is yours, which is mine and which is yours, where 'we' belong; how and when we blended and dissolved into one form and came loose and pulled apart from each other and wearily, gratefully, collapsed right back into the amorous arms of each other.

over and over, to enfold and unfold.
where we belong.