The descending sun,
A tranquil withdrawal -
An end,
Yet also a beginning.

A delicate watercolour on canvas of sky,
So lovingly crafted.

Soft dusk reveals tiny opals of constellations,
The moon smiles a spectral lustre.

Yet only almost-content;
Your absence leaves me hollow.

Without you I often feel
Like a child who has lost her parents in a department store
And turns round and round
Waiting to be rediscovered and led back home.
It is a childlike feeling
In that it is so pure and intense
That it overwhelms everything else.
It's consuming,
This...lost, echoing sort of feeling,
This space inside me that calls
For you to be next to me and heal me.
It's the simple, gripping yearning
Of the child inside my heart
For connection
For tenderness
For contact-
To reach out and find purchase with my fingers
In the warmth of someone else's skin,
Someone I love,
Someone I trust.
Someone I miss,
Even when they are close.

Without you I often feel
Like a balloon that has been cut from its string
And left to wander through the stratosphere,
A lone black dot wavering above the treetops.
I have no control over where I am taken,
No way to reach out to where I've come from and say
"Wait, I want to go back."
I am adrift, in the most terrifying sense,
Emotionally floating through the emptiness of air,
Above all else but utterly alone.

I fear being away from you,
Is the truth,
Is the constant struggle.
I fear the mornings when your arms are not around my waist
And your breath isn't on my collarbone.
I fear the days when my hand isn't clasped in yours,
Tattooed in golden brown henna and entwined,
Fragile but steadying,
Like the rope that holds a ship fast and safe from the greedy fingers of the sea.
I fear the evenings when you aren't curled up beside me,
Your smooth voice telling me stories and ideas.
I fear the nights when I cannot look at your sleeping face
And feel the heartbreak cry out in my chest
Of loving every curve of it
In the halflight shadows
And seeing your skin glow gold
Against the velvet darkness.
I fear every second that you are not near me,
And that is why I feel so oddly lonely
In any tiny breath of a moment
That I am unoccupied.

Without you,
I'm not even entirely sure I exist.
Not properly,
Not like one should exist.
I think perhaps I pale a little,
Like a negative photograph,
Perhaps my edges become a little hazy
And the world bleeds into me and takes my light,
And my skin becomes a little transparent
So that if I stand before a streetlight in the rain
You can see the wet road through my back.
I think a little bit of my color drains,
And I become drab as a silverscreen movie,
Only projected upon the world and not
Really there.

No way of approaching how I feel without you
Can explain it fully,
And little flashes of what I mean dart across my vision like meteors.
I can try to equate it with something relatable,
Something tangible,
But the truth is that missing you transcends the words I've got to explain it.

I feel like a child, crying because she has realized what the word "alone" means.
I feel like a ship, cut adrift and floating through a mirror sky of sea
With no land in sight.
I feel like a worn out film reel
Ghost of an image hollographed against the world.
I feel like I've lost something
I couldn't live without.
My lungs, perhaps.
Maybe an artery,
Or the bones in my legs.
It feels wrong, to be without you.
And yet,
I am.
Without you,
I am...
Something.
But I'm not even sure I care to know
What.

...and I'll give you half an ear.  
[L9:  Robert.  And sent a pic when returned.  And yes, I loved him, shame to say.]



(sonnet #MMMMMCMXCI)


Where gloaming filters out in greyish thence
And fading halflight, children's voices trail
Some barking canine as no birds detail
Calm whispers whose soft breath tugs at me hence
Likeas to stay my footfalls with that sense
Tis now, and here.  Ne stars yet in blue's veil
Except the evening star alone oer pale
Dead houses, and how sunset burns low.  Whence?
Indeed.  He's gone to Burning Man as twere
Or some take off that, romance forfeit too,
Else I'll wish for a date with each in poor
Excuse, how's that?  The problem is...that you
Are not here.  What are cool winds' murmurs?  You're
Who gives dusk romance.  Tell me that you knew.

23Oct16c

Someone's taken a serrated blade to
the core of this night
It's moon, shrouded in a widows veil
forms the dimmest of halflight
As the stars all seem to weep its
passing where they fall
And I,
I don't want to sleep with you,
I just want to stay up and talk
As the sounds of the street resound then
fade through this tiny boxroom
The silence filled with comfort as the blue nile
soothe on late night radio

Our view, 
a city landscape towered by the now
idled dockland cranes
Do they dream to escape
to the endless deep blue
like you and I
Or do they cower in the darkness,
longing for morning and
a purpose once more
That dawn jolts as its light reflects
sharply to my eyes from
your stainless blade
But I wake alone, with you lost
to the thoughts and dreams that you are
As the cranes begin to clank
to a meaning they crave,
I cower alone and
accept my fate

No memories, no plans, just empty days full of
headaches
Sour apples on the window sill, sour grapes with
no seeds
Bought in sterile supermarkets where everything is
half-price
Wilting in the halflight of ***** windows and
paintchips
Smile with me, Maria, the day is almost done,
We can dip our hands in the canal, wash it away
Carry me where you will, among the brambles and
reeds
Let me sleep in your arms, just hold me,
please

I smell like the zucchini bread that I spent all afternoon baking.
You smell like pine wood and soap.
She smells like lavender and lipstick,
He smells like rosemary and hope.

We all bike down the valley to get to the spring,
helmets on, eyes to the horizon,
the skyline, I swear, rose to meet us that day.

You and I get there first, we lay in the sun
by the river, dancing on the stones,
jumping off ledges in boots
til the wind chills our bones.

We warm up with blankets,
unpack our baskets
and settle in for the sunset over the river.

Illuminate the bridges,
halflight the buildings,
shine on the rivers,
the light stopped lilting.

Brilliant colors, then none at all.
It grew darker again and we said goodnight.
"Do you mind if we don’t go straight home?"

Not at all, not at all, not at all.