Are you ever here with me? (A poem)

I have a longing for you that ebbs and flows. I do not know what makes it swell. Often in dreams — maybe nightmares — I'm wandering corridors, looking for comfort, not knowing how to ask. As if you should understand it as I do: without words, without thought, without effort. That isn't how this works. I know it. (I still want it to.) We both still want it too, though we only admit it when we're pushed. This is the fear of unrequested solitude — silence that comes from outside rather than in. So we keep an arm's length, and in that length, a chasm: self-doubt, loneliness, the belief we are not worthy of each other. Entire lifetimes in that space. Could-have-beens instead of are. This longing disappears into the labyrinth of that space, lost for days or weeks or months. I am lucky when the ball of yarn rolls down a corridor and is swallowed up. We seek out something at the heart of this space between us, yarn in hand. Are you ever here, in this labyrinth with me? ABM