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What is this familiar storm that taps on the windowsill of my mind? I look for you closely, but you are the wind. What is this chill I feel in my bones, that warms to the touch? What is this sound, that I hear between whispers? I listen with all my heart, but your song is sung in a strange silence.

I hear it now and again, in these midnight evenings, around the corner. A smell that was almost a smile in a mind that was almost a soul. How I languish in its melody. Eternity is the air between me and yesterday. Its strings hum in the vibration of ghosts dancing in hallways that were never walked. Where have you gone? Where have you been?

A missing puzzle piece lay inside a picture of you. Its stark contours perfect a reflection I would otherwise ignore. It brings out your eyes. Were it that simple to dismiss your incomplete image. To discard your absent face. I long to find a substitute to complete you. To feel fingers that were never there. To stop knowing so well the knock that never answers. But I fear that you are perfection. I fear that you are divine.

Angel feathers float as if to fly. Tears drop, never meaning to cry. You are a butterfly’s sigh. What is this world that makes up feel like down? What is it about you that is never around? I can taste you on the memories that have forgotten their tales. I know you in moments that never mattered. Why?

When did we forget? When did I protect? When did you first hesitate? When did we say it was okay to abate? Relate? Renunciate? When did a dream become a fantasy? Why did we stop letting go? What questions are these? A strange reversal of toes and fortune, in a land where walking asks only a little wondering and wandering requires wings.

What secret symphony hides behind fingertips? Torrid love affairs politely dare to wait. Passion grows on trees; fallen fruit a maiden’s fare. But here is not there. Here, against the odds of a rich man’s bet, is the breath between the apple and the fall. Nothing bated. Not quite sated. There is a forever that is not quite here. It raps and taps and can’t blow the house down.

But there’s never a but. There is if only. There is a yearning. There is a wonder and a wander, a splendour and a squander. There is a shadow of a smile as bright as sunlight. And there is a puddle that knew what it meant to cry. There is a truth that never had a home and never lost its way. It just didn’t like to stay. And when there is a moon or a star, there is a gentle feeling of what you are.

What does it mean when you come out to play? What am I to do? What am I to say? What is this tender storm that raps against my windowsill? Is that your echo sounding in the wind? What is this warmth underneath my skin? Where do I start, and where do I begin?