My lips were still parted

as I walked heavy hearted
dragging my feet
like darkness,
across a dimly lit street.

I stopped 4 times.

Four times
between the security gates
and the bed
your scent still slept in.

1
You turned to walk away.
I couldn't breathe,
like my lungs had learned
your leaving.

I begged you to turn around,
in whispers,
through heaving.

I wondered if they had run me through
the x ray machine,

the way they did the rest of your baggage,

would they have been able to see it break me.

The rungs of my ribs
collapsing
under each step we took apart.

my heart sinking in my chest,
like treasure.

My hands clenched around each other
if not out of loneliness,
than in prayer
for you,
for yours.

(Walk)

2
I didn't know where I was going
at first,
I thought my moving, madness.
See?
You wouldn't really go.


I didn't make it to the elevator.

Nothing about me in that moment,
could fit into a box
I couldn't be brought down any further
I couldn't watch the doors close
on the only forever I ever had.

Too much symbolism will get to you like that.

The way I see you in
clocks and calendars,
still clinging to a countdown
your watch would stop short of.

I can still hear mine tick.

The way I smell you in
cocoa butter and ocean mist,
our love belonged on a beach
but swam too far from shore.

The way I taste you in
red wine and cigarettes,
I was drunk on your stare,
But you know those things will **** you.

The way I feel you in
poetry and panic,
praying into my palms
until my body felt holy.

Sometimes I write to your God.

(Take the stairs)

3
I'm outside.
The air is lit like a cigarette.
My body,
frayed
like a fuse.

Im bursting at the seems
of a skin that has never quite fit me.
Pounding on the doors of a mind
who can't remember
why?

I recalled every moment
you held forever in your eyelids,
then blinked.
When suddenly it hit me,
what if this time you really meant
goodbye?

I was trapped in wide open space.
Like the ones between my fingers.
like the one growing in my stomach,
like the one on the other side of the bed.

I guess I should have mentioned,
It would **** me if you left.

(walk)

4
I didn't leave a note this time.

But I promise
I had a million words to say to you,

I typed them up,
I wrote them down.
Watching each one
rise at my fingertips
and fall at your feet.

The way I did.

You spoke like family.
You felt like the pages
of my favorite book
when I ran my fingers up your spine.

I kept every note I wrote,
this time.

I couldn't hide another word
in the soft folds of your suitcase.

Secrets never travel well.

(Shhh)

I touched the door you'd touched before me.

Empty rooms are like a boxing ring,
My back was against the ropes
while my eyes fell to the drapes
tracking take-offs like ticket sales.

We packed the house.
Our home.

As time huffed and puffed
and blew the whole thing
down.

I stopped four times.

Each time I'd turn back
but when I started,
I'd remember the last time you left
while I watched, heavy hearted.
My lips were still parted.

Our lips were still parted.

She wrung the morning
From her paint soaked dress,
And watched sunlight
Dance across her fields.

On this night,
my heart forgot to stop loving you.

With star dusted verse and milky way melody,
I sang to you a jasmine scented lullaby.
Through crescent waves of moonbeam,
I breathed my lavender love into your dream.

In the morning when you wake, will you feel me there,
as sunlight, streaming through your sleep damp hair?


Mine is the heart that forgot to stop loving you.
Yours, the heart that could not remember to begin.

I am a war torn casualty hopelessly lost in an unfamiliar landscape.
I pick myself out of the rubble of a crumbled existence,
casting aside the well worn masks of my own invisibility.

I am stopped in this breathing place,
my quiet cocoon of safety
where unpredictability does not dwell,
but neither here does life,
neither here do I.
The silent screams that well up inside me never find their way out
and my door remains locked, the world shut out.

"The war is over,"  I try to convince myself.

This is my holding pattern.
I wonder will I ever feel brave
enough to unlock that door and
venture forth into life again?

Who am I without my captor's angry lies,
that cruel mouth that formed words defining me,
those rough hands that molded me
into the shapeless form of his invention?

I never thought to tuck myself away in safety,
hide myself in a tiny crack, or between pages of a book,
my treasured keepsake that I could run fingers over later,
smiling and whispering, "Yes, I know you."

No, I abandoned myself years ago,
left myself a motherless child.

The hands on the clock go round and round.
I dig through rubble behind a locked door,
searching for the girl I abandoned long ago
on the battlefield of disenchantment.

I miss you like the day you left,

with tears in my eyes,

forming angry rivers of deep seeded sorrow

and jealousy that I wanted to drown in.

We never said I love you,

But we could feel it trembling behind our lips with our last kiss.

Goodbye was painful enough without the dagger of truth

cutting into our chests.

When we found that one way ticket

my heart dropped like a pin in a silent room.

You were stoic like the Mona Lisa,

determined in your lack of discontentment

while I sobbed you away.

The worst of it was in the the future of irresolution.

I would never know if you’d come to love the world

more than me.

I would never know if I wasn’t Home

for you, anymore.

I would never know, if I waited long enough,

steadfast in my domesticated loyalty.

I’d sit, like an old dog, on your tacky foyer welcome rug,

waiting to tell you that I’ve not forgotten.

And if you never came back here

I’d still miss you like the day you left.

I had to tell myself that it didn’t make sense to count days,

or months, or years, if it came to it,

because even as my Sun rises,

and your Moon also does,

we still think

of that bed

that we’d fall in

and out of.

Wait, go back
Go back!
It's not over yet!
It didn't end like this.
I know it. I know it.

I know this story,
I've read these lines.
Next you're supposed to say
"                           "
Or some other witty, beautiful words
that drown me in my guilt.
And I'll just stutter and stammer
and trip over my words like
that time in May
when you tripped on that root
on our hike in New Hampshire.

I hand you a lollipop.

What the ****! Why
would I hand her a lollipop?

I hand you a bleeding heart
and you examine it.
You **** it.
You write your name on it and
carefully - HAH! - horrendously you force it down my throat.
Swallow.

But after all of this,
I still know that in this twisted
***-backwards, convoluted world
I am still head over heels for you.
I'm still the same, perfectly sane, guy you knew before.

Ribbit.