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If I call you beautiful…

Do flowers bloom within your worried eyes
surrounding you with color, with thoughts
Looking past the mirror to that place you have been,
that you long to be again

Do you bite your lip,
looking within, seeking past the darkness,
subconsciously smoothing the ruffles of you dress,
shuffling your feet a bit

Do memories flood your mind
of days before lipstick and eye shadow,
when cute was as common as wrinkled nose smiles,
playing inside or out were your choices

Do you roll your eyes and sigh,
describing a portrait that only you can see,
a mirage of impressions you have collected,
stored away in that file you reach for regularly

Do you brand me blind or crazy at least,
point to that one tiny blemish you know,
turn and walk away kicking dust as you go,
shutting the door in disbelief

Or do you see your reflection in my eyes
the woman that you are to me,
hear the affection in my voice, the truth
and wrinkle your nose once more and say, “I love you”

I wrote this for you a long time ago on a coffee stained napkin, after you left me, full of love, lingering in a cafe.

"For you, in all your follies and faults and the way they make you so perfect for me.
For you, in the moments that linger in the vehemently insignificant corners and corridors of things, as if drifted of their own grandure.
For you, for the words that spill to the floor and the brilliant way you understand the deafening silence that follows.
For you, for your supernovas and clever shades, for your daylight smiles and nighttime skins.
For you, for your familiarity and the impossible truths that stand as martyrs to say that I have loved you before.
For you, despite the treachery and quiet sinister fun of the world.
For you, for making me so terribly scared of dying."
Yet here I am, in your wake, so full of so many thoughts and demons. Know that I have died, that I have loved and lost with equal measure.

I missed you today.
With a suddenness, a bereft slap across my skin.
When that familiar hair ahead of me on the sidewalk
turned.
And it wasn't you.
I missed you in the hollow of the moment of the stranger who wasn't you.
And with resounding howl
Like a grieving mother
I missed you.
I remember in the sheets we'd tangle,
I smelled them. I smelled summer air and my perfume
I smelled  your soap and your musk in that minute second on the street.
I stopped and I breathed in deep. Inhale, Inhale.
Before you turned and it was not you.
Like a sailor's wife on the shore
I watched as the stranger who wasn't you turned back down the street
Growing smaller and smaller in the distance.
And a thousand piercing stinging blinding pins of light forced themselves.
They stabbed at me and took my breath.
Took your scent and the bed we lay.
On the street, on the street
as you walked away, the stranger.
Paralyzing me with your nearness only to be someone so very much not you.
I missed you and i stood in the street and gravity gave up its pull to laugh at my foolishness
and my eyes filled with tears to celebrate their perfect deception.
and my bones forgot how to hold on for dear life
and I slid to the ground
to the ground
because
I saw you today on the street. The stranger that wasn't you.
I have learned the art of hiccuping you inside.
Memory, hiccup. There you are now tucked away inside.
Kisses on the soft hairs at the nape. Hiccup that away too.
And all of the hiccups came out in a swallow of your name...
A hundred swallows, truth.
They flew wickedly around my head  gleeful in my faux pas.
And ten hungry vultures came to take the remains of my hope.
Pick away greedily at my anticipation.
Satiated on the last of my blind faith and now they are too fat to fly.
And I am too weak to run.
Because I saw you on the street today,
The stranger that wasn't you. My beloved. My adored.
Such a peculiar street.
I will not pass this way again.
sahn
04/09/2014

i loved you
and i love you still.
you never did,
you never will.