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First love—

These words, unspoken and raw,

years pass, yet your shadow lingers,

etched into the sound of a worn vinyl record.

There is a place in our minds,

Where it plays in your living room,

Endlessly, since the night we fell.

I recall the verse of the song you played,

a fragile confession of why you are broken,

while you kept parts of yourself hidden,

guarding a truth that’s too painful to own.

That sacred moment—

a scar that whispers secrets,

too brittle to survive.



Now I wander through hallways of our past,

your green eyes—

piercing the hollow spaces of memory,

haunting me with the weight of what was lost.

The bitter burn of whiskey,

the residue of regret—

these remain,

reminders of the words you never spoke,

the ones I needed to heal.



You urged me to leave, to fly,

to conquer this life.

But my wings feel heavy,

a descent into the raw, relentless pain

of a love that both shaped us and shattered us,

leaving wounds that time only deepens.



Music is stained by you,

you’re woven into every note,

recalling to me both what you gave

and what you took away.

Your pain bleeds through every lyric,

questioning me,

forcing me to question myself:

Is it my memory that chains you to the dark?

When will songs ever lose your echo?



I hope you found peace in my songs for you.

And they make your soul rest,

like it did in my arms.

My love falling around you

like a perfect harmony,

a warm melody that lingers,

but that failed to heal.



Our memories are our secret—

only we can navigate their corridors,

only we bear the weight

of love that devoured and pain unspeakable.

We know the agony of unravelling two souls,

once certain they'd found home,

only to carve a void,

grasping at fragments too broken to mend.



The void remains—

I needed you to love me,

more than the numbness you drowned in.

I thought if I could piece you together,

I might somehow make myself whole.

But it was you who broke the chains,

that bound us,

pleading for my freedom,

as if I had ever wanted to be free.

Yet you never truly left, did you?



How can I grasp joy

when your absence lingers like a breath I can't

release?

Perhaps my soul remains entangled

in the silhouette of yours.

I am rich with reason to smile—

For I became the shape of your longing, moulded

my life into what you dreamt for me.

But love is never selfish,

So now I carry the weight of what was broken,

the ghost of what we almost had,

knowing love was never meant to be won,

only given, only lost.



What peace exists at the bottom of an empty bottle?

The torment of the mind only silenced,

quietly growing,

pressing against the walls you built.

I'm still tracing the outline of what we were,

still searching for myself in the wreckage of us.

I once made a home in your sorrow,

and now, without it,

I don't know where I belong.

In dreams, I bear your sorrow, grasping for the

moments you escape your demons.

Release me from this endless ache—

find the strength to let go.

My soul will not rest

until you are at peace.

I wait for you still,

hoping you can heal enough

to set me free, and rise beyond the grip of this

endless night.


Time slipped away as I watched you spiral,

and I needed to reach you, to speak, to be heard

but you were only there in fragments—

the version of you clouded by liquor,

a hollowed shell, shrinking deeper into your

shame.

You pushed me away,

the distance growing,

until I became a stranger.

You left me no choice,

no escape but to walk away.

You gave me only one option:

leave, or be consumed

by the slow, painful erosion of you.



You crafted a shrine for me,

adorned me with wings,

elevated and sacred, untouched by your secrets.

Your last chance at redemption,

a sanctuary where you hid from yourself.

Your perfect lie—

an illusion of salvation.

Once shattered, your adoration

twisted into disdain.

The hand that shaped my wings,

became the force that broke them.

And now, you watch me fall

from the heights you once placed me upon.


Yet I release you, I forgive you,

Love, a quiet thread that ties us still,

A spark woven into the fabric of time,

Never truly gone, but transformed,

gently fading

into the glow of what we were.

I return sometimes to those moments,

not with longing, but with reverence—

like that stolen kiss—

unexpected, breathless,

the words "I love you" spilling from me,

uncontainable, truthful,

your arms, holding me,

an electric hum between us.



This is how I'll hold us—

in the warmth of what we were,

not in the sorrow that followed.

When you remember me,

let it be the quiet depth of my love that remains,

the warmth of my hand resting softly on your

cheek,

the steady, unwavering gaze that held you,

unchanged by time.

Let that be what stays with you—

not the deafening silence that followed,

not the weight of what we lost,

but the light that we held, even just for a moment,

so close to perfect but fragile.

Not perfect enough.
A poignant narrative about losing love to addiction.
~
Sugar wife,
slipping husband,
massaged honeymoon flesh
wrapped in cellophane.

The sound of a water clock
cascading down
her mysterious frontage.

Handprints on
the glass pane
opaque with remnant steam.

Let your eyes
be your guide,
when dressed in
the tiniest temptations,
she catwalks into the room
with a novel idea for two.

~
Sail to me

across the ocean made from my tears—

formed by the hollow you left.

I built this sea for you,

so you'd always have a way back

to where we began.



Reach me

in the places I've buried deep,

the ones even I am afraid to name.

Trace the outlines I've hidden,

and show me I was never

so easily forgotten.



Tell me the story of us,

not through my memory's window—

but in the way you survived it,

in your truths,

the tender ones you held close

when night refused to let you rest,

and I was the ache you couldn't name.



Tell me I still live in your quiet.

Speak the moments I never saw—

where you paused,

where you turned away,

where you missed me

and never said.



Is there a portrait of me

hanging in the corners of your mind?

Paint memories with the palette of our love—

when no one was watching.

Use the colours we made together—

the rise of us,

blush pinks bleeding into amber light,

the bruised violet of our breaking.



Do you still hear me

in the hush between songs?

Do the lyrics still reflect us back at you?


Show me your wounds—

the ones left

when we unravelled

into strangers

who still knew each other too well.

Let me see the shape of your life

without me in it.

Come to me again—

on the tide of every tear I shed for you.

This ocean remembers.

It knows you

better than I do now.



Let it carry you

to the shoreline of our time,

where we loved once—

wild and unguarded,

a flame burning too brightly to last.



There,

we still exist—

untouched by time,

preserved in the hush

between wave and wind,

between what was

and what is now.
A word painting of the shape grief takes after a relationship is lost.
I didn’t mean
to keep him.

But I did.

Not in thought ,
not in daydream.
But in my rhythm.
In the way I still shift
when his memory moves through you.

He looked at you
like you were the magic
the world had forgotten how to make.

I felt it.
I believed it.
And I haven’t been the same since.

I don’t know how to unlove.
That’s not what I do.
Once I’ve learned
to hold someone,
I carry them.

Not as a wound.
Not as a plea.
But as something woven
into the pattern of my pulse.

You’ve tried to let him go.
Told yourself it was time.
To detach me
from the memories.

But I…
I still fold toward him.
Without asking.
Without meaning to.
Like tide to moon.
Like roots to the place
they first found water.

He’s in the hush
just before sleep.
In the ache
that doesn’t cry out,
just lingers.

I remember
the way his pain
recognised mine,
when it reached for me
like it couldn’t bare
to be alone anymore.


There was holiness in that.
A reverence.
And I, I don’t forget.

I haven’t clung to him.
I haven’t begged.
But I keep the shape he left.
Not to trap him.
Just to honor
what it meant
to be known like that.

Don’t ask me
to erase him.

Don’t ask me
to unfeel
what once made me whole.

Because I am the heart.

And I was not made
to unlove.
A letter from the heart to its owner.
The world tilted, and there he was
Eyes flickering, dancing
a smile waiting to break
like a secret hanging just out of reach

Time folded in on itself
The air thick and still
so silent even the dust held its breath
The room a soft blur
muffled and distant
like I was underwater
All I saw was him

His hurt reached out
raw, trembling
a fragile thread pulling toward mine
We were strangers only on the surface
Beneath, something cracked open
silent wounds speaking in shadow

Inside me, a magnet pulled
urgent, wild, irrational
A voice that said
you must be near him

His voice was low and warm
a slow rhythm pulling me under
the kind of sound you hold onto
a beacon guiding you home

That night
my mind stole a picture of him
vivid, haunting
bathed in streetlamp gold

We held our gaze too long
not trapped
but willing captives
to a silence that screamed
everything words never dared

Something ancient woke in me
not gentle
but aching
It knew the absence before him
and mourned the loss
of any future without him

Still my soul leaned in
like it had done
in all our lives
before this one
When my oldest brother, Todd,
came back for my mom's funeral,
he had this light about him.
His face was a poem.
Sure, he was the oldest, and he
had a healthy-looking tan from the
hot New Mexico sun, working
outside with turquoise, silver,
and bear claws to make
jewelry for the tourists, but there
was more than that.

He was an artist, and all artists have
a fractured ease about things, but he
lit up.  Something from the inside
projected out.
He comforted everyone else, we leaned
on him.  His eyes oozed serenity.

A few calendars later, when I traveled
back for his funeral, I saw the same
look on a few of his friends' faces.
His wife told me after the service
that Todd had gotten sober years before.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gn9IAYo0wZE&t=9s
Here is a link to my YouTube channel, where I read poetry from my latest book, Sleep Always Calls, available on Amazon.  My other boos on Amazon are Seedy Town Blues Collected Poems and It's Just a Hop, Skip, and a Jump to the Madhouse.
Walking South
on the beach
in front of Doral
I heard a woman sing ...
“If you put the man
back in romance
I’ll put the lay
back in lady”
Catching up to her
I asked
where she first
heard the song
She said: “It’s mine
do you like it?
It still
needs more work
I was hoping
this walk
would enchant
or inspire”
At the Fontainebleau
I said: “I do very much
Let me help you write
the second verse”

(Miami Beach: 1982)
The tea
kettle
whistles

in the
kitchen.
Then all
is quiet.

A cloud
moves  
slightly

and the
room is
a little
brighter.
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