Sands of Time

The space between us

is only silica,

ancient sand pressed thin

by heat and time,

the same grains that once

drifted through an hourglass

counting the slow fall

of days we could not touch.

I press my palm to the cool surface

and feel the heat of your voice

traveling through it,

pixels blooming into the shape of your mouth,

your eyes arriving

like light that has crossed oceans

just to reach this small rectangle.

Distance is real.

It has weight.

It lives in the silence

between the last word and the next.

Yet every night the black mirror becomes a window

and the window becomes a door

and the door dissolves

until there is only the sound of you breathing

and the quiet knowledge

that the sand is still falling,

but not forever.

One day the glass will be set aside.

The silica will return to the earth

or stay in our pockets as ordinary dust.

And we will stand in the same air,

no screen between the home of your palm

and the place where my hand finds it.

Until then, I nurture hope.

I keep holding the hourglass upright,

watching the grains move

toward the moment

when waiting ends

and we begin.