Unsaid

the numbness lingers on my lips

the stillness of your breath

when it used to heat my skin

those winter day endings

being lost in the sunset glory

framed by cottonwood elders

the numbness lingering on our lips

from the bitter cold's kiss

we always had wished more than this

yet now I only long and miss

those times when your eyes

were as endless as the western Kansas horizon

and when we danced in glances

passing each other's windows

feeling the knocking of the heart

yet kept to the stranger's fence

but savored every moment peering through it

both of us never finding the words

escaping our tongues as a tide of birds

still lost in all of what was there and unsaid

lingering in the numbness on my lips