Reach back
Smell the ancient cigarette smoke
On pages soaked
With the sweat of lost love

Cramped hand
Suppress bile rising like waves
Do not read
Better off to forget

Faded heart
Etched on the empty shell of memory
Forever burned
By your stolen embrace

Sometimes the gods let you live
to know there are fates worse than death
I never feared losing my mind
but what was once held in my heart
is another story.

fortunate we are
to live in rural surrounds
no pollution here

the baby gurgled
as his brother tickled
his rotund tummy

I think
moss is growing,
webs are forming,
poison ivy is creeping,
weeds are sprouting,
willows are weeping,
inside my chest.
I can hear the echo
of a tiny,
wavering voice,
calling down the
wishing well cavern
inside my rib cage.
"Help me..."
"Don't forget me..."
My shriveled,
weary heart
thumps
and
drums
feebly against my flesh,
crying out for attention,
creating tremors,
earthquakes,
in my overgrown,
suffocating,
internal garden.
The ripples,
in the pools resting on my chest,
tell me
"You're still there."

"Don't give up."

I admire her in silent reverence,
though she doesn't know my name.
Milky skin and graceful curves
will haunt my every day.
She radiates a boundless wonder;
sets my heart ablaze.
Oceans swell in desperation,
longing her embrace.
And when she's fallen, I'm adrift
by daylight's sullen gloom.
No other woman can eclipse
the beauty of the moon.

I’ll never love another* he inanely thinks as he flips through 112 channels with a remote that hardly ever leaves his hand and even though each and every program he lands on is a repeat (he never blinks) but he can lose himself inside a world of surreal and not try to face a world that is real. Please he pleads to the TV Just give a something, anything, to be make me free. Show me a world where I can be me He sighs as she walks into the room and sits down next to him and looks like she needs to say something but he doesn’t want her to begin…

I’ll never love another she tearfully thinks as she slips into the room and stands inside the doorway, quietly, watching her beautiful groom, flipping channels almost angrily, like he doesn’t care to watch what’s going on but is searching for frivolity. She sits down next to him and gives him a smile that is much too grim and slips her small delicate hand into his to grasp the remote control and slowly take it away from him so she can turn off the TV and make him face what is in her soul, she needs him to see the ultimate goal. She gently places the remote next to the empty cereal bowl.

Please don’t say it, please don’t please…. Don’t... He is reciting his litany that has been his personal prayer, his own mantra, over and over again because, ever since the cancer, she’s been distant and he doesn’t know how to close the gap. How can you ever get over a life that is cut short? What do you say? Why can’t people look at it differently? How come only one that is loved becomes “That poor sap” What’s up with that? She doesn’t know what he knows. All he knows is that he doesn’t want to hear what she has to say before she goes.

She’s sitting there silently; he’s holding his breath indefinitely. She looks him in the eye with a tear on her cheek, he feels it is now his turn to speak….

Rabbits! He bursts out loud
And she absently rubs her hand across her bald head
Yes she says, mostly embarrassed
I had them tattoo them on to my head
so from afar they look like hares instead…
I’m just so sick of not seeing the fun side of life

He fully sees what it has taken for her to come forward but there is no comforting her when he is stricken with his own strife. It’s time for him to go, she needs someone stronger. Someone who will comfort her in the hours that she needs and can give her some sort of life. She’s thinking that it is time to unburden the only person that ever understood why she chose to live and why it would be inevitable that she very quickly die and if he was anyone else she would not have gone to such lengths to make them understand but she always knew that he would want to know why.

How can she explain to him that no matter how much longer they had left together that it may be short, it may be long but time is irrelevant to a soul mate. It’s as easy for him to explain that there is a perfect reason to try to hide the pain but it seems almost impossible to escape even though there is a reason for haste.

One lets the other go to spare one another, such a waste...

Jan 25