Shall I compare thee to a rose,
or to the weight of autumn leaves falling,
each one a memory you couldn't let go?
You, a shadow cast by daylight,
your love, like rain, falls once and never returns.
Fourteen years, you said—
but I count you in the breathless space
between now and forever.
I never stopped listening to the silence,
never stopped calling your name
where it echoed against the walls of a cracked sky.
You were the wound and the cure,
a garden where flowers bloomed, but never grew.
Your love like a fire,
flickering in the wind,
burning me up,
but never enough to warm the bones
of what we could have been.
You held the past like glass,
its edges sharp and unforgiving,
breaking whenever I reached for it.
I reached, but you always pulled away,
like the ocean pulling back from the shore,
leaving nothing but the taste of salt.
I could have been the song you sang
when your heart knew no words.
But you played my love like a broken harp as the sharp needle, slowly cutting grooves into your favorite record
and leaving me skipping as dust filled the scratches,
caught in loops of yesterday, while the new melody played today,.
You loved like a fading planet, a falling star, ,
a light that danced for a moment on the horizon
and then disappeared, just as I knew you would, like a red sky beautiful but fading fast,
leaving me with nothing but the memory
of what once was,
Is that what you have also
You send me pictures,
fragments of time I cannot touch.
Your smile, frozen,
like a ghost in a mirror
I never knew how to hold.
You are the space between breaths,
the absence in a room full of voices,
the song that played in the dark
and left me waiting for the chorus
that would never come.
Maybe I should have burned the letters,
let the ashes drift into the wind.
But instead, I buried them,
tucked them into the soil of my chest,
where your name blooms
in the dark of winter.
You were the rose that never opened,
the thorn I kept in my skin
and never had the courage to remove.
How could I? You were both the ache
and the answer,
the fire and the rain
that never knew how to fall together.
Hurt people hurt people, they say,
Wish you never let your hurt touch me.
It was a wound I could never see but feel
only a shadow I could chase,
a kiss I could never taste.
You ran from my love like a bird afraid of flight,even when the cage door was flung open you pretended you were
trapped in a cage this of your own making,
fluttering just beyond my reach, but always softly in sight.
And I? I stayed, held on
Like the tide that cannot leave the shore, I did for sometime but eventually every tide returns to the depth of the ocean
I returned again and again
to the place where you held us,
even as you built walls, one moment here one moment gone,
I got use to it,
that you kept me on the outside,
I got use to it
watching the world we could have made
slip through the cracks of time, wondering what would it have been like ,
I got use to it
They say there are many fish in the sea,
but you, my love,
were the one I wanted to swim with,
the one whose scales shone
like the forgotten light of a dying star,
the one whose beauty
was both the reason and the ruin.
but as we swim in different tides
following different streams
I learnt to let go
I got use to it
You loved me, in some quiet way.
Maybe not in the way I needed,
but in the way you knew how to.
And I got use to it
Like the wind that touches your skin
but never stays long enough to hold,
your love was a moment I couldn’t capture,
And I got use to it
a flame I couldn’t keep from burning me
and leaving me with ashes
but I wet those ashes
wearing that ash like war paint
because I got use to it
I learned to love you from a distance,
like a painting too far to touch,
like a song too soft to hear.
I let you be,
because in the end,
I was the only one still waiting,
still calling your name
into the night
that never knew how to answer.
You are a scar I wear with the grace of the past ,
a dream I keep buried in the roots of my chest,
where the soil is rich and heavy
with the weight of you.
And this
I got use to as well
As always.
I will never chase you again,
but you will always be here,
in the spaces between the songs
and the shadows between the stars.
You are both the fire and the rain,
and I?
I am the silence
waiting for the storm to pass
but even if it never does
I've will get use to it
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
March 2025
FORGOTTEN, REMEMBERED, NEVER HELD
