ARGUMENT FOR LOVING FROM A DISTANCE by Katie Condon

Raining this morning & the foothills are dusted
with the gray light that comes with bad weather.

Even through the water’s falling sound
the train makes itself heard across the city

like church bells at midnight. What beautiful moaning
loudness becomes when it’s forced to stretch itself

across a distance. Like the way my lover’s song greets me
from upstairs, where he’s singing in my shower—

even across our short reach, his voice sounds truer
than when he sings & I am near him. Listening

to him croon through the water’s heavy moving,
I’m certain Eurydice was pleased

when Orpheus looked back too soon.
How happy it is to die twice

when your reward is your lover’s real voice
reaching you across wind & water & time.

How relieving to realize he is more himself
without you than when you are spread out

naked below him, your hair tangled in his palms
& his song diluted from your sating his longing.

What is constant across all love
is the inevitability of its end.

One of us will grow bored
or one of us will die, & knowing this it seems

Eurydice was best to leave love early.
Wait too long & he’ll stop

singing even from a distance. Go
now! Run from your love! May your absent

touch be the bells he hears clanging out from the steeple
into the gray night that slows into morning,

where the train will try to out-moan the wind,
where he will liken this moaning to the way

you sounded beneath him. He will pick up his lust
like a lyre & sing your name trying to reach you

wherever you are. & wherever you are
you will hear his song haunting the air like mist.

Listen to how entirely he loves you, for the first time.