DISAPPEARING

For months we’d been monitoring your news
          as if you were a broadsheet,
and I’d trace
      the outline of your every response
so I could recount it precisely. The light was always
    on in the window, the mountains always
                                                                  far away.

        Then I went and missed your message.
For two nights I didn’t know
            that you had tried to say hello
one time when you couldn’t sleep.
While I sat on a rattan chair,
            a silk kaftan draped over its back.

                  Over here I see the ocean, still as a stone,
    until a ferry emerges and slices the surface
                  like a cutter through dough, leaving
            a line of stubborn white foam. 

      The light is always
on in the window, the mountains
    always far away      and the cicadas
creeping in the shadows
                            never stop shrieking.