Separate, Separate
To separate is to force space in between.
To be separate is to have that space already exist.
In a canyon, it’s easy to see the divide: the river. Hundreds of thousands sand grains wash away from the rock and they do so over hundreds of thousands of days.
We all stand on that line - the marker between what we were and what we will be. Heads swiveling to either side, wondering whether to pull ourselves apart or be pushed.
This side or the other.
Here or there.
If I am here and you are there, we can see each other with binoculars but we can’t speak to one another without technological interference.
We can wave but it might not be seen.
We can speak but the wind might be the only witness.
If I am here and you are there, we can look at the same things. The river’s water becoming white at the tips when it rolls over the rocks.
The colorful layers that mean: time.
If I am here and you are there, we can see the same stars. A light which may already be dead in the blackened folds of space.
If I am here and you are there,
we can reach our arms but our fingers can’t touch.
Maybe the here and the there will remember what it was like for our bodies to be close by. Pressing palms together even when it’s hot outside. We will have known what each other sounds like at night, in the depths of breaths taken without direction. We will have known which shirt meant it was a good day or a bad one. We will have known what kind of food would be ordered for a birthday dinner.
But now, here on one side of the river
and there on the other,
we can only take up our own space.
We can only be the one with two feet balanced on the edge of a beautiful and deadly sandstone cliff. We can only be the one wondering what that river water would feel like after one or two or five minutes of immersion.
We can be one in wondering: what brought us here?
And where will our feet take us next?