I wish I could have seen your life like the ebb and flow of tides.

The water’s edge damp with pocked green and brown seaweed gathering in pools at the shore.

Seen the hermit crab crawl out of its shell, skitter across the beach, seen its bubbles of breath,
and the shards of purple mussels and white clam shells.

Signs of past life dredged up from the sea. Fissures in a death march.

I wish I could have seen your ebbing soul, your gripped lips, your lidded closed eyes, and imagined a life beyond your shrouded shriveled self.

Pared down to thin bones and wrinkled sleep not spirit.

That would have been a beginning back to you.

Back to your ebbing soul, your closed eyes, a life beyond dust, back to love.

I wish I had heard the unheard like murmurs of unseen waves. Heard whispers in your gasps of being.

I wish I had noticed a crack in space, in time, remembering not your unknowing, my unknowing, but the presence of the unsaid on your lips.

Now I wish I could dream you whole, dream you alive. Dream you with me. And imagine our breath mingling among the stars.