You were the one

I needed;

More than all the fanfare:

The lyrical beat,

Some empty engagement,

Some puffed up promise.

You were the one

I needed.

So I find myself

Famished,

Come the end.

There is a terrible wonder
a childlike mystery
wrapped in the word
'Innocence'

for none of us have;

though once,

we did.

and how haunting the notion
as though even lost Eden
still lingered somewhere
on the edges of our
bitter broken hearts



Perhaps
mine was stolen
about the age of ten

or worse
perhaps I sold it
for bittersweet pleasures,
the foretaste of
everlasting ash.

to never again
know the joy of kindly eyes,
or the incomparable inhalation
of that first breath
when the rumors of the sea
become real
to both sight and lung.



Stolen,
or lost,
or sold,

or very simply removed

through the cruel currents
of terrible time.



Yet:

redeemed;
recovered;
repurchased;

if only I have
the audacity
to put myself aside

and yet come

to the crux
of humanity
and history



with the shameful
significant cry

'forgive me'

I remember laying out
Two stories up
On the roof of your house
In early summer
When the stars burst sudden
And the evenings are yet cool

I remember the stars
Dancing in your eyes
As you saw so much more than me
And you smiled at my wonder
Blowing a kiss to the constellations
Before we hurried back indoors
Shivering

My heart now heavy as stone

and it seems to me

come judgment day

I shall crawl all that way

with it shackled to my ankle

and yet ever be alone

I am not

looking to

kiss a million girls once.



But to

kiss one girl

A million times.

I will not

Strip you apart

As the childhood folly

Of a ‘she loves me,

Loves me not,’

Daisy.