Long Distance

Your voice on the phone is both sweet
and raw.
Without touching me you
press nerves and skin, you unspool
the tension in my belly.

How many miles above our mixed-up heads
is the satellite that brings us to one another?
You reach up to scratch your face
and I feel its roughness against my cheek.
I am the wind that runs cold fingers through
your hair.

But of course it only leaves me hungry:
this distance.
Outer space, the hum of the satellite cruising
through our atmosphere, the static
of comets barreling by on their way
out of the solar system.

I want your lips on my throat, your
hands at the small of my back
your arms gripping me tight as a seatbelt
so that when I crash from this great height
I might have a chance
of surviving the impact.