The Lines, They Lie Cold

Are you in here?
Of course you are
I just wrote down your name
My pen moving with a shadow
Of the grace it learned from your arms

Words settle on the paper
Like an expression across your face
But frozen
Unable to capture your subtle reactions

Lying there, they read
As if narrated faintly by your voice
In the grainy vinyl of text
Without the hush of your breath
Or the wet of your mouth
To guide them

They want so badly
To bear the flash of eyes
The burn of cheeks
The curve and twist of flesh
But the sad little letters
Are dull and cool and rigid

What text could have the power
To summon those thousand pleasant scents
All so familiar
And impossible to call to the mind
For want of adequate words

My words cannot wreath
In invitation like you
Cannot incite like you
Cannot whisper like you
Can only dance
Like a disjointed scarecrow of you
Not wanting to be a mockery
But accepting it

Could words reinvent you?
Faded instructions rolled up
For far away days
Bringing you back with a thought
In puzzle-piece likeness
Called together from the spare parts
Of stitched-together time

Or, if found by another
Would they cast a ghost of you
From the warm familiar needs
That haunt the memories of all strangers?

Powerless to convince themselves
That they speak of your being
The pages pile up
Each one a summoner's charm
Each a failed golem
Unable to call your true name
To rise with your movements
They lie wherever I leave them
Cold and still
Like false memory