The windows to you remain so close to me 
as you sleep in the cradle of my arms, 
shut so tight in the dark.

I wonder what different planets you've molded without me.
If I'm there by your side or a different 
version of us exists in those private realms.

If the imperfections we've carried into this home 
have been chiseled and sanded away, 
smoothed over to be the ideal joining 
we once saw fluttering in one another's eyes.

That was years ago when the entirety 
of our days and nights seemed unstoppable 
against the slow but furious hands 
gliding around every clock.

The windows to you still remain open, 
blinking and inviting when they rest near me, 
where others have seen curtained museums 
or lonely shuttered manors, 
we see endless layers.

Colors that can shift and throb from a touch, 
contract when the presence of one another 
crackles through the air like electricity 
ready to coil and devour.

The windows are worlds 
I wish I could climb into, 
inhabit and see all as you do.

But it's better to take your stare
and the way it stills mine as a gift, 
to remember that letting anyone in 
means something so much more than the knowledge 
of all that lives just behind your gaze.

The quiet gaps when your eyes close, 
that I'm the one you've entrusted
your bare vessel to while drifting off
matters much more than the worlds 
temporarily sprouting inside your dreams.

Whatever mirrored versions of us are made there, 
whatever demons are on your shivering heels
from the years I wasn't by your side, 
I know one thing as I fall asleep next to you.

You'll always come back to me 
once the windows are open again.