The collection moves deeper with this poem — from the value of time shared to the active experience of two lives genuinely interweaving. Scott observes the relationship itself as a living thing with measurable interior dimension, moving and combining and aligning toward a single shared desire. The stanza at the poem’s center — anticipation teaching patience, to each other we run — names the experience of separation honestly and finds in it not merely endurance but formation. This is the collection’s most relational poem.

I wrote this poem in the awareness that what Priya and I are becoming together is something neither of us was before. Our lives are genuinely combining — our individual histories, our different traditions, our separate ways of seeing the world are meeting and producing something new. Anticipation teaching patience is the line I am most grateful for in this poem. The waiting between our times together is real and it is instructive. It has taught me things about desire and patience and the value of what I am waiting for that I could not have learned any other way.