Delicate

del-i-cate
    -adjective
2. fragile; easily damaged; frail


And so the poem begins;
      I stare at the tender words
of the dictionary. Do you yearn
the way I yearn? To haunt with an image,
an impression like a city, years ago
a forgotten foreign place of cobblestone alleys
and mountain rain drops. Were you there?
Were we cuddling on the couch of the hostel?

Or is this memory wrong somehow...

How desperately I want to shape this,
the moment we climbed into the words "easily damaged"
and talked our way out.

Are we fragile like a sunset?
    beautiful, gentle, fleeting,
yet there is a consistency
    and an assurance.

Or are we fragile like innocence?
    or like innocence was, I should say.

We are fragile like this poem,
trapped in the confines of its vocabulary,
fighting our way into a place
we'll never get to.