The sea in you

When I wake under the moon,

I do not know who I have become unless

I move closer to you, obeying the give and take

of the earth as it breathes the slender length

of your body, so that in breathing with the tide that breathes

in you, and moving with you as you come and go,

and following you, half in light and half in dark,

I feel the first firm edge of my floating palm touch

and then trace the pale light of your shoulder

to the faint, moonlit shadow of your smooth cheek

and drawing my finger through the pearl water of your skin,

I sense the breath on your lips touch and then warm

the finest, furthest, most unknown edge of my self of self,

so that I come to you under the moon as if I had

swum under the deepest arch of the ocean,

to find you living where no one could possibly live,

and to feel you breathing, where no one could

possibly breathe, and I touch your skin as I would

touch a pale whispering spirit of the tides that my arms

try to hold with the wrong kind of strength and my lips

try to speak with the wrong kind of love and I follow

you through the ocean night listening for your breath

in my helpless calling to love you as I should, and I lie

next to you in your sleep as I would next to the sea,

overwhelmed by the rest that arrives in me and by the weight

that is taken from me and what, by morning,

is left on the shore of my waking joy.

This piece was originally published in The Sea in You, an anthology of twenty poems about requited and unrequited love by David Whyte