We don’t speak any more.
Nails fly out of your mouth to crucify
while I oscillate between hanging in pained silence
and screaming thoughtlessly back at you.
But far worse than your nails drawing blood
is the piling of the silent stones, day by day,
into a monument I cannot climb,
inscripted with the character of your life I can no longer read.
Could I ever?
You bludgeon me with “you will never understand.”
I never believed you until now.

I cannot see your knights
and know not what dragons they have slain for you.
I was once your champion.
Your laughter is shrouded when I am near,
although I hear it report from a distance,
its absence piercing shooting pain.
I cannot know your particular darkness
for the shadows are yours and yours alone.
But I knew something of your lands once
and sacrificed more than a little blood on your soil.

You fence me in lines I never drew.
But perhaps if you just start again
by telling me a secret,
the garden we once planted together
will not lie so barren and unkept.
I tend it still.
Tell me a secret
that I might once more whisper to your heart.