Love With an Open Hand
I sit upon a half-empty bed,
looking through the glass at Okada.
Its tower shimmers in the night,
each window holding another life.
I know it should be beautiful,
yet tonight it feels distant,
a city made of trembling light
that the glass cannot contain.
For twelve weeks, each day was ours:
the sunlit mornings of Austin,
the restless traffic of Manila,
the coconut palms and seas of Bali.
Three places became one world
because wherever I awakened,
your face was there beside me,
and I knew that I was home.
The Buddha taught that all things
arise from causes and conditions.
Nothing possesses lasting substance.
Nothing remains unchanged.
Yet emptiness does not mean
that nothing is real or precious.
A rainbow cannot be grasped,
and still we stop to behold it.
A dream cannot remain forever,
yet it changes the one who wakes.
So my tears fall when I think of you,
as though part of me has gone.
Perhaps there is no lasting self,
no heart that can be called my own.
Yet something within this body
knows exactly how to miss you.
I miss the warmth of your smile
and the joy it awakened in me.
I miss your hand finding mine,
quietly saying, You are safe.
You made the ordinary sacred:
morning coffee, dishes, and walks,
meditation and shared silence,
the simple comfort of your nearness.
Now you are above the clouds,
returning to the town that raised you.
I remain beneath the same sky,
watching the hours carry you away.
The earth may call us distant,
but distance belongs to bodies.
It knows nothing of the way
your laughter still lives within me.
I dream of touching your face,
of watching your eyes meet mine,
of feeling two once-distant worlds
recognize themselves in each other.
It was difficult to watch you go.
But this place had grown too cruel.
I would rather miss you in your freedom
than keep you near me in my pain.
Love must not become a cage
built from the fear of being left.
It must remain an open hand,
tender enough to let go.
But letting go is not forgetting.
It is not abandoning hope.
It is trusting that what belongs together
may one day find its way again.
So I ask the restless wind
to carry my love beside you.
I ask the Buddha to guide you
with the lamp of his wisdom.
I ask Guanyin to hear my longing
and shelter you with compassion.
I ask Ganesha to clear the roads
that may lead you back to me.
I ask the stars and the universe,
all that is seen and unseen:
if our love still has a path,
please bring us together again.
Until we meet in a gentler place,
I will remember what the Buddha taught:
impermanence does not ask us
to make our love less deep.
It asks us to love completely,
without commanding time to stay;
to cherish what has touched us,
then open our hands to the sky.
Outside, Okada’s lights still shimmer.
The glass reflects the distant city.
The sky, for this moment, carries you.
And my open hand carries hope.