I think if we are being honest, we probably would admit that at times we fear there is an unbridgeable gap between us and others—readers, friends, family, partners—that language cannot cross. Or maybe we fear the gap is in fact bridgeable by someone less damaged or more talented or attractive or authentic than ourselves. To cross this gap is the dream of all writers, and that dream is a kind of metonymy of the human dream to cross over into intimacy or connection. It is this melancholy awareness of inevitable distance between humans, and the hope that it can somehow be crossed over, that gently permeates this poem.