It's as if we're climbing
over mountains,
except by some cruel trick
we trek along the fault line
rather than across
and as we crest each painful saddle
there is no choice
but to slide back down the other side,
blistered, limping, starved,
and carrying too much weight,
hoping the next peak
will be the last.

Except,
it's nothing like climbing mountains,
for at least in the mountains
I can breathe.

The photo you took
and then gave to me
still hangs framed
above the altar,
next to the calendar.
Should I have taken it down
when your words slipped away?
Perhaps.
But it hangs as a reminder
to hope
for Lovely, Wonderful,
Improbable things.

Disbelief -
I am
Not a "thing"
I am just interactions -
Stories.

I have faced down
the existential anguish
that drives lovers
to padlock themselves within.
I have woven blankets
to warm my cold shoulders
when I tumble
through the abyss.
I have created
Reason, Religion, and Reverence
out of Absurdity and Stardust.
I will always be
more desirous of desire
than secure with security,
more comforted by wonder
than wondrous of comfort,
and more of the romantic than the realist,
though neither is whole
without the foil.

Please, please,
Don't be a ghost discreetly -
Please, please,
Don't let me go completely.

Where there is love, but there is no passion
There is a hearth that has gone ashen.
It is a sleep where there is no dreaming
Day will break, but there is no gleaming,
A familiar dish, lacking in heat,
A well-known dance, lacking in beat,
A complex wine sans maturation,
A photograph sans saturation.

My eyes fly open
And flick to the light
This time your ghost
Has stayed the night.
Your smiles and laughter
In dreams I've kept,
But I've held too long
And overslept.