Integral Longing

Third Person
Longing is the distance
between two photons
moving apart at the speed of light
casting and receiving states of being
instantaneously.
One’s spin mirrors the other’s new spin.
The quantum physicist says:
it is because everything
was once gathered and senses twins.
Says the neurologist:
it is because people can have ghost limbs.

Second Person
You are a bonfire eating my liver.
My ribs protest.
You make a smoke signal of me.
No planes are overhead.

First Person
I am a photon with telepathy.
I am a brain with a missing hand
holding a missing hand.
I am a coal-bright liver searching
the sky for myself, growing long.
Clouds yawn
and disappear as I darkly approach
whispering rain.

We have nowhere to land.

2012