I can't count the number of times, the wind stopped me in my tracks.
The length of night that stretched out of my heart.
The number of times, I could not say goodbye.
I counted on so many things to signal your return.
Each time, the signs dwindled down, to what they are today.
It was never, the way you described; I found out,
unintentionally.
You'd call on a whim,
And miraculously, I'd be there.
Like the worn down music-box my grandmother kept.
My motor was wound, and I laid,
Always ready.
Even if I were blind,
I'd know you from the gentler notes.
The rate of your breath, the sound of your voice, the scent of your hair...
I didn't have the heart, to stay far enough away.
I wasn't a slave,
But, I couldn't call this freedom.
I was a poet, with a few words,
and a jar full of tears.
I'd carry them to town: every morning negotiating a fair price,
to those who'd pay.
They'd pay me in flowers, in kisses, and large bellowing laughs.
But my pockets were empty, my lips parched, my voice hoarse.
But I did have a smile. It spread from cheek to cheek.
My eyes would receive the light, and transpose it into something else.
Faces molded by a Gutenberg Press. Antiquarian, but lovely either way.
After a day or so, the ink would fade at an alarming rate.
Once red lips, now chapped and anguished.
Their arms, could not hold me.
I was already, very far away.
Now, I watched as tears fell, from eyes that weren't my own.
I watched, and felt a pain in my stomach.
Not the gut turning pain of guilt.
I was hungry!
But my pockets were still empty.
I spent it all (out of concern for my health), on a fake smile and an empty glass. But don't think it was all that sudden.
I was cold, I was alone, and I was drifting through a town I didn't know. I went back and forth with the angel in my heart, and the devil in my ***** for a whole 30 seconds, accepting the shame I knew you wouldn't feel.
Now, now, I know what you're thinking. This story deteriorated into one about me. But it hasn't. It's still about you. 100%.
So, I'm sure, one day, you'll read this letter.
You'll file it away with all the postcards I sent.
Maybe even loosely bind it in a folder, held together with rubber bands, stables and tape. Not with the notation "beautiful poems," nor "inspiring messages," and definitely not
"everlasting love."
You'll put a post-it note on top, and label it "Deranged, Obsessive Ramblings."
It'll float around, bouncing in between the chasm of your perfectly sculpted head, till one day you realize: "It couldn't be about 'Him'."
You see, my life had none of the adornments I mentioned.
It had no flowers, no kisses, and assuredly, no bellowing laughs.
But I can say,
I was really, quite hungry.
The End.
For Mayra
