The Unseen

What is this phantom carved of warmth and weight,
This unseen architecture of the pulse?
Can it be snared, a rope suspended from the bough
of some ancestral oak, a swing to catch
the falling self, or must I map its ghost
through empty air?

I search the spectrum for a single hue
to stain the barren canvas. Does it burn
crimson like the sun, or wear the shroud
of winter fog? What instrument reveals
its shape? If I should don the lens,
a glass, a heavy brass monocle,
the sweeping glass of distant stars,
would it resolve against the dark?
They say to see is to believe,
yet I am blind before this altar.

Can it be heard above the rush of blood,
or tasted when your lips meet mine,
a quiet pressure, tongues that graze
like hushed confessions spoken in the dark,
a sudden sweetness on the tongue
before the word dissolves?

Can I reach out, uncurling stiffened palms,
and catch it as my naked soles first find
the shock of summer grass,
cool, living, undeniable beneath the dew?
To have each sense brimmed to the very edge,
overflowing, blind-drunk on the sense of you.

I peer behind the armor of your smile,
past the quick parry of the jokes,
the well-rehearsed facade of laughter.
I log the daily data of your grace,
every twitch of hand, every unspoken thought
recorded in the ledger of my need,
seeking the hidden geography of your soul,
hoping to find in the dark mirror of your eyes
something no mortal gaze has charted yet.

And still, the ledger closes in the dark.
With every action weighed, every behavior known,
I stand suspended in the quiet room
and ask the empty air,
the quiet dark,
the beating heart:

Is love with me?