I never got to love the girl
she spreads wide her rainbow net
where the sky plunges on crystal river
tides swell to hide her shame
ebb to fill her bag of catch

I never got to love the girl
her hairs in the wind
my dreams spawn
a flower rising from the riverbed
she grants a love in my head
spreads wide her rainbow net
thru the long night of blue moonshine
her frock fills up with sparkling life

I never got to love the girl
could no way be the right match.

The old man mumbles in a dying voice
had my sons been alive.

A tear wells in the daughter's eyes.

She pours a spoon of water in his mouth
and wipes his lips and her eyes.

Having lit the pyre of his three sons
he was willing to barter his daughter's life
if that made God grant him another son
and here is the daughter by his bedside
feeding, cleaning and even shaving him
her only prayer to God being to save his life
bartering her entire means.

Outside the thunder cracks the sky
and she spreads a tarpaulin over the bed.

my son laments the father.

Inside her is no cover for rain.

When you meet him down the hall
After three months of being 1000 miles away
There will be no candlelit dinner,
No couch bought after searching for hours on a Saturday afternoon
Meant only to spend Sunday evenings on it snuggling.

You will not have a first dance,
A first child together,
A first anything.
He will not call you “his girl,”
Or tell you that he loves you.

You will not tell him that you love him either
Because you know it’s crazy to tell
A married man you’re hopelessly in love with him and everything about him -
To expect
Him to drop his wife and everything he is doing,
To drop to his knees and propose to you with a plastic ring
Because he knows you’re cheap and he hates jewelry.
It’s crazy to think that he will hold your face in his soft palms
And allow his lips to press against yours,
To mimic all the passion in your heartbeats that call his name.

He will not touch more than your shoulder.
It will mean nothing.
He will smile at you,
Not because you are you,
But because you might have said something funny -
People smile over more than love and coffee
And you’ll never spend lunch with him in a downtown café, anyways.

It won’t be because you prefer strawberry tea,
It will be because he prefers another woman’s presence over any gift you could’ve given him.
You will be kind to the woman he chose instead,
Because, like her husband, she is clueless
To the thoughts that keep you up at night,
Talking to your pillowcase about blue orchids and a gold band he will probably lose.

He will never know that he is the ex
That solves the equation
Of your happily ever after.

I knew you had a princess
you told me day one.

What you didn't say is how wonderful she is
how talented and how nothing I could do measured up to the
beauty she is, creates and masters.

Her womanly elegance far surpasses my freckled childlike wonder
and I look at what I can never be, and I won't change for you.
I did that before and it shattered me.

Love has never been my role, mine is
one of the long game, of guardianship.
A light to lead the way home.

I see now, that she's yours.