Her touch was but a memory of skin and warmth
Gingerly engraved within my heart
Like so many before, yet like no other
I can not explain the need,
The urgency that attends
The prickling of my skin at her voice
Which I have too long since heard.
She is the hope of all I wish I could be
And so much of what I (what we) could do in this world
To heal, to soothe, and to mend
To bind the broken hearts
With the words that robbed me of my own.
Traffic lights stretch into bars
On paved road in the middle
And at the end of rain
Figuratively and literally trapping travelers,
Penitentiaries of yellow and red.
My head is a house of mirrors
Distorting words unspoken,
Bending intentions
Around a suffocating heart.
She is the wind
The quiet that kills,
The silence that sows fear
In fields where flowers once grew.
She is the earth
The grit and shale,
That marks the pathway
For feet stumbling, blind.
She is the sky,
The radiance of noon
With clouds freckled across
Marking the beauty in shade.
She is the moon,
Her calm laughter
Trickling in the form of light
Tucks the children into sleep.
While wilting in crimson melancholy
Weeping petals as morning rain
Or tears that pool in midnight mourning
Turn over a new leaf
With the gentle nudge of spring,
Stretch out of winter’s shade.
It is such relief
To hear your thoughts
Mirrored in a stranger’s voice
Or laid out in pen.
Dried up at the rivers of her feet
Old age is creeping skin
Folded with the precision of time
Lapsing into shades of night
Caressing you to sleep
But peace lost in tossed sheets
And stains of blood and life undone
Arrest your heart with hesitation
While the day’s arrival forbids forgetting.
A touch left unfelt
And words purposely garbled
To keep unsaid the thoughts that fold in
Like dying rivers and creeping skin.
Creeping contradictions contort
Themselves while constructing kosher
Sentimentality, placating inner turmoil
With unstable promises of change.
The fact is this
I’m too selfless to be
Selfish enough to fight for you
Unless that is what you want
But I’m terrified to even ask
I tried once before to tell you
But I jumbled too much at once
And apologized profusely
For the apparent inconvenience.
There is always someone
Better for you than me.
I am a much better friend
Than I could ever be a boyfriend.
I’ve spent much more time
In this position.
I’ve gotten comfortable
I know the field.
Here you only have to trust me so far
And I the same with you.
At the end of the day
We sleep in separate places.
And I try not to remember
That I can’t forget anything about you.
Moonlit Poetry 