You said that I could find you
In the space that lies between
The reality that binds you
And the traces of your dream.

You asked me, "Can you dance
To a poem by Baudelaire?"
"La danse," said I. "C'est la poésie
Avec des bras et des jambes."

Your hands made a ballroom of my body
Your fingers tap-danced on my skin
Oh, and how I moved under your melody
Like a waltzing gypsy violin.

There is another woman living
In the friction
Between your hips and my thighs

Do you think I haven’t seen
The memory of her
Swimming in the moisture of your eyes?

Do you think I haven’t noticed
The sadness
In the lines around your smile?

Do you think I haven’t realised
You’re somewhere else all the while?

Do you think I haven’t measured
The distance between
What you say and what you mean?

You’re not the first to show up here
With a broken dream
Slung over your shoulder
Heavy with things you never told her

How you’re wishing you could hold her
As we’re lying on my bed
I can hear her broken promises
Resounding in your head

I’m tired of being a consolation prize
I’m tired of soothing away silent cries
I’m tired of picking up the pieces
And wasting all my kisses
Wondering why no one misses
….me.

Should I just accept the fact
That she’ll probably want you back
Once she remembers all the things
That are making me fall in love with you?

I wrote a poem for you
The day before I met you

When I didn’t yet know a soul can be shipwrecked
Or that the sun can have secrets
When I hadn’t yet learned to look for symptoms
Or dreamed you could become my weakness

You entered me like a sickness
From your first ‘hello’
You whispered my world red
And smiled it yellow

You came to me; a sonnet
A decorated soldier
Dressed in sentences and statements
With which to catch a schoolgirl
In succulent surprise

Your eyes kissed me
Long before your lips did
And under the spectrum of your splendor
My heart bloomed a blushing orchid

I was a slave to my sweet-tooth
You, a dulcit daydream
That knew just how to turn me
From still life into story
And in so doing, you cast me -
A shapeless statue -
Into your private purgatory

You created a planet
With just us living on it
And a snakepit, a sinkhole
With which to swallow me whole

I wrote this poem for you
The day after I met you
I thought it worth to mention
Why I started to regret you

So please pay close attention
(As I’m trying to forget you):

My innocence
Though far from inner sense
Was no less common
Than the unoriginality
Of your sugarcoated sin

That night in the streets of my city
When I was alone
He appeared to me in a whispered memory
And, like fireflies, my exposed suppression was revealed
Time had bound me in the threads of misery again
While the aching in my chest for forgotten company
Lured me into madness
It recreated my sadness
And he hadn't even said my name

I am waiting for the stars to lead me
Away from this late night double-feature
But I just can't get these scars to leave me

Our time was too short
For me to realise
That a five-star last resort
Was all I was to you

I should have been the wiser
I should have seen the womaniser
In time to stop myself from
Building you inside me

I fell in love with the beauty in the bridges
And the richness of the ridges
Connecting you to me

Can't you see
How this poetry
Is defined by everything I've ever laid my heart on
Every race I've ever had a head start on
Every game I've ever played a part in
And every end of a new beginning of mine starting?

How can I wake up
Into a new day
When all I have left of you still belongs to this one?

How can I be redone
When I can't even say
The sounds that make up the music of my name?

How am I supposed to move on
When everything still looks the same?

I've bid farewell to the vows we'll never take
And I've said goodbye to the children we'll never make

Yet I will wait for you indefinitely
And like a dream that's blown apart
I will wait for you
At the bottom of my heart

If I could recreate reality
I'd soften the finality
Of your forced farewell.

I'd make it so
That I can peel
Your every kiss-shaped memory
From my skin
And keep them in a tin.
So that when I miss
Your goey lips
Against my cheek or chin
I'd simply take them out
And let them kiss themselves
Onto my skin again.

If I could recreate reality
I'd lessen the enormity
Of my endless emptiness.

I'd sew a song
Into the you-shaped hole
Of longing your life left
Imprinted on my soul.
A never-ending
Heart-mending singsong
To fill me and
Fulfill me.

But wait...

If I could recreate reality
I'd have no use for tinned kisses
Or pointless paltry poetry
Or stitches in my soul.

Because you'd be here.
And I'd be whole.

Transfixed, I watch the worlds
In your eyes transform
From blue to brown to green
From sea to ground to tree.

Framed in wisps of orange flame
Your face alights, your cheeks glow bright

I sing a song about your name:
“Aim far, aim high
Aim star, aim sky
Aim you, aim me
I’m you. You’re me.
Aimee…”

My darling daughter
You are my Sun
And around you, I’ll revolve
Eternally turning –
A maternal merry-go-round
On your playground
Of seas and trees and ground.