transatlantic

i watch the air raid alert map. no news of explosions

tonight, which tells me you're still alive. the

red flooding lviv is the same

red as the circle next to your name that

lights up when you're awake that

lights up my heart when i see it, already half-

dreaming, so i tell you good

night and good morning in the same breath.

electricity burns across the ocean

across ten hours of time

to count the ways i love you, in the way language lilts

from my hands to yours,

on waking.

 

if i were a poet, i'd say that our namesakes

were conspiring against us, the sun aching into

morning

but i'm not, so i watch the sirens go off

in your middle of the night

while i'm eating dinner. and i

 

need to hear you talk the same desperate way i

need you to sleep through the night, if

it's a promise that you're still breathing. so instead

i count the number of regions pockmarked by

the bombs falling on your country

and (the map tells me) not on you.

perhaps it's selfish. the air raid alert map

holds no answers, only

answers me in ukrainian, so i watch

information subpixel across my screen in a script

i can't read. but i would learn new alphabets

to cross all the distance between us

to name a time, a place that isn't mine

to speak your name.