you are always with me
even when you are not
Life’s full empty room
Breath’s bittersweet sigh
color of Nothingness
transparent as angels
color of darkness
perforated with light
color of tears
fallen
from the dotted blue blanket of Sky
you are always with me
even when you are not
suspended like the crescent moon
the alphabet of stars
the space untraveled
between us
as if
inextinguishable
presence and absence
relinquish their names
surrender themselves to the Invisible
as if
only
without holding
may we trembling feel
the infinite nearness
of our immense
aching
fragility
i marvel
at the innocence
of your tiny unopened fists
how
butterflies still
fly from your lips
how mine drown
in the drool of gurgled silence
how
even as the umbilical cord
untangles around my neck
my voice so far away
is trying to reach you–
buried so inexorably
in your muffled lullaby
i am always with you
even when i’m not
© 2019, Antonia Alexandra Kilmenko
ANTONIA ALEXANDRA KILMENKO is a former San Francisco Poetry Slam Champion and she is widely published. Her work has appeared in (among others) XXI Century World Literature (in which she represents France) and Maintenant : Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art archived at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. She is the recipient of two grants: one from Poets in Need, of which Michael (100 Thousand Poets for Change) Rothenberg is a co-founder; the second—the 2018 Generosity Award bestowed on her by Kathleen Spivack and Josheph Murray for her outstanding service to international writers through SpokenWord Paris where she is Writer/ Poet in Residence.
