in the meantime

My heart abruptly, but softly, suggests, “Tell her.”

I raise my head toward the window. Befuddled, my eyes shift between the limb-hung leaves as they tremble beneath the bounding bounce of a balance-focused squirrel, “Tell who what?”

My heart, reaching across a pause as if stretching on a yawn, “Tell her…tell her what it is you feel for her.”

Mildly annoyed, I stutter, “Tell who what? What her? Who her? Who are you talking about?”

Rolling over onto its side within my chest, my heart presses on, “The lady on the other side of tomorrow. You look and listen for her, yet you say nothing, risking no spare words. Perhaps, she also looks and listens for you. How is she to hear your silence?”

Obstinately, I snark, “Whatever, this is foolishness. Where is this coming from? Surely, you’re not so bored as to take up bothering me with this nonsense!”

Two quick beats and a retort: “Tell her.”

Reluctantly, I engage, “What is it worth to entertain ghosts? I know as much in my silence as I know in speaking to no one in particular. Besides, what good would I be to any woman if they have me locked up, heavily medicated and counseled daily for talking to you all the damn time?!”

Again, “Tell her.”

A slow breath and another. I recline, arms crossed, into the seatback of myself.

Again, “Just tell her.”

Too thoughtful, I whisper, “‘Tis beyond me.”

With a thump of indifference, my heart gives chase, “Trust, man, she can take it.”

I rasp in return, “That’s not the point.”

At that, my heart gently quests, “Then what gives? What boards you away?”

With a deeply drawn breath, I surrender, “I’m afraid. After having felt the loss of much in this life, I’m afraid of losing even the hope of her. It’s one of my very last keepsakes.”

“Ah,” my heart contests, “but does not love conquer all? Does the sun not come ’round? Does the moon not kiss away the darkness while the sun is hidden?”

“Truth, all of it,” I admit with a secret reservation hovering like a mist about my lips, “yet love conquers on the featureless face of its own clock and by way of the gentle lines of its own clay-wheeling hands, not my own. It is enough, enough for now, for me to sweetly feel.”

“I concede,” my heart consoles with a quieting, “and I will forgive, as well, that there be unripe rewards worth the waiting; but if her smile is the most anticipated among them, then shall I in the meantime merely sleep, ache, hunger, languish and long?”

“No,” as I turn away from the window and the long-vanished squirrel, “you shall in the meantime more greatly love.”