I'm watching your features fade
From our children's faces.
The pieces of you
Are flitting out
Of their personalities.

I can see our daughter's face,
My mother's curly hair
Framing it,
And your eyes blinking at me
From underneath it.
Her fingers are fast
On frets and strings
Like her father.
And she jumbles up the digits
On her math pages
Like her mother.
I can feel us hold her for the first time,
I can see you kissing her forehead.

The hardest part will be letting this go.

I can see our firstborn son,
Running up to me
For a kiss after he scraped his knee,
With Starwars temporary tattoos
Climbing up his arms.
I can picture the freckles
Sprayed across a nose like mine,
And a brave smile
From thin lips like yours.
I can see you running his dumptrucks
All over the house together.

I'm not just losing you.

I can picture our second daughter,
With fine hair from you,
Colored ginger from me.
I can see her muddy footprints
Tracked through our kitchen,
From staying out in the rain,
Just like her parents loved to.
I can see her toddling
Through our home,
My eyes staring up at me
Filled to the brim with tears
When she falls,
Your nose all red,
And my mouth
In a pout.

I'm losing them too.

I can imagine our youngest son,
Snuggled up on your lap,
With his daddy's scowl
From drowsiness.
Then my smile, and your laugh
As you blow on his belly.
I can hear him crying
In the wee early hours of the morning,
I can picture you holding me,
As I hold him,
Rocking him back to sleep.

I can see our children
Gathered around the dinner table,
And I know,
The hardest part will be giving up
This dream
I built with you,
This future we'll never have.
I'm watching them
Fade away.

You words
Curved into a jar tonight.
Your "I love you" is empty,
Your love is hollow
As a jar
Tonight.

Let us speak only in tongues
For all that wasn't made obvious
May present its true meaning in the unintelligible

Let us converse in stanzas
For what wasn't clearly heard
May perhaps show itself between these lines

Let us exaggerate and romanticise
For all that was spouted bland
May be heightened to receive some light

Let us exchange and trade through poetry
For all that's lacking in common words
May secure a foothold in the readers' hearts

It's nights like this
That I remember there's
Tinted glass
Between us.
Our lives
Our worlds
Go through a filter
Before touching each other.

It's nights like this
I rememer that I'm the one
Banging on the glass
And screaming your name,
But either you can't hear me,
Or you
Don't
Want to.

Sometimes you glance up
And I ask myself
'What does that look mean?'
Or I internally shriek
'He actually sees me'

I've spent I don't know how long
At this point,
I've lost track,
Desperately trying
To get your attention.

I want to tell you.

I want to walk miles
And miles
To you,
And yell everything
I've never understood about you
And demand answers.
But that's selfish.

Right now it'd be selfish of me
To voice
What is going wrong,
And that reminds me
How trapped I am.

On the other side
Of tinted glass