The way you left
Was more than I ever needed to know.
Ammunition enough to baracade myself from you
For eternity
And more.
So why does my heart still act like a bird
I've locked in a cage,
Stolen from its home.
Relentlessly whispering
That one day it will escape,
Find it's way back to you.

Under the stars that knew no judgement
We danced on sands
We had forever been taught
Would burn our curious feet,
Dipped our toes into banned oceans.
Born again
Into a world without restrictions
Lifted veils on new dimensions
We had forever been taught
We were not supposed to see.

My love,
I've never felt more brave nor more proud
Swimming in these waters with you
When everything we'd ever known
Forbid all but steady ground.

Your face was in my dream again last night.
I'm not sure when I can expect this to stop happening.
This subconscious need is becoming habitual,
Almost as frequently as the conscious one,
Like all the times your name appears in my search history.
Not that I can see anything,
Not that anything I can imagine
Is an active representation of who you are now,
But because somewhere, despite all my exhausted efforts
My heart is still playing out our story.
My heart still fights with the endings,
So it makes up new ones,
Spins images into happier realities.

Have you ever been madly in love?

The old man broke my reverie.

On the long faded green bench white with bird droppings
he was peering at me through his silver grey beard
looking oddly out of place in that college squire park
where only the dreamers at the prime of youth
would sit between classes to exchange love notes
and steal a kiss when the passion couldn't be reined in.

Have you ever been madly in love? he repeated,
and then as if growing impatient by my silence
mumbled, pausing between words,
like they stung him like thorns
it extracts a price been paying all my life
living with a void no other woman could fill
a commitment that breeds only pain
yet makes me insanely boastful
of being madly in love.

It was recess hour and the benches were being filled up.

How many, I wondered, would still hold hands
when the classes are over.

He hasn't buried the baby within
but today he buried the ashes of his baby
crying like a baby
as the river devoured the bone dusts
and all the remnants
of the cuddles and kisses
hollowing him to remember
the guest of his blood
that would feed on his grief
for the rest of his life.