I can only hope
For what I know
For what I fear
Is not real

In this world
We call our own
The two sides of damaged minds
Alike in time

My love will last
But turn to nothing
It's fate within
Too true to be denied

I'll stay with you forever
In the back of your mind
You'll forget me
I'll remember every crevice of you

Feel me now
For I will be gone soon
When you vanish into the smoke of the cave of disinterest
I will lurk in your fog

Watching, waiting, anticipating.
These words are rhyming words
Indicative of both love and want and need
While also alluding to a form of stalking.
“Love makes us do crazy things” they say.
Well, crazy- crazy is nowhere near what I am.
I love and want and need with so much of my being
That I am no longer myself.
I am enslaved by this woman
With her hair curled loosely at its ends
With her eyes soft and blue and searching
With her hands small and expressive
With her lips shaped like rosebuds
And her spirit alight with passion.
This woman traps me in her gaze.
I am no longer myself.
I yearn to see her pass me by in the halls.
I long to run my fingers through her long, mousy brown hair.
I pine for her and all of her.
I am afraid of my captor.
Her quiet intensity makes me doubt each word I say,
Yet she encourages me to speak my mind.
I fear I will make a fool of myself,
Yet she laughs at my goofy humor.
I am afraid I am too extroverted for her liking,
Yet she smiles when she sees me.
It is my gaze, my eyes filled with laughter that make her smile.
I am afraid that this is all a hoax,
A dream, an inception, and that all of this
Is merely my imagination getting the better of me.
I try to look away
But every time her eyes meet mine
I cannot strip my gaze from hers.
I doubt she will ever feel the same
But she always ends her sentences while looking at me.
She always says words like
“Enflame”, “inspire”, “awaken”, “desire”
While looking at me.
Her soft blue orbs peer into mine for minutes
While others only get her attention in short, unimportant, instances.
This is all too much for me.
It’s far too delicate for me to bear,
Yet I know unreciprocated love and affection
Is the most inspiring.
I cannot tell if she is my love or my muse
But I love her
And I want her
And I need her
And I will never be the same.

My desperation is not discreet.
It sprays off my tongue every time we meet.
Like the octopus squirts ink to evade capture.
Inky I love you's flood from my mouth, a Tsunami of rapture.

Loving you is the ocean and desperation is decompression sickness.
Whenever I come up to breathe my head spins, nitrogen bubbles explode in place of butterflies.
Isolated on this lonely island, my clouded mind tears me asunder.
If I die a living death  you would be my beautiful, poetic blunder.

Desperation feels so intrusive to me.
Like the crazy relative no one wants to see.
Hitting my peace out of the park with ease.
Taking my moments in time to another, full of need.
Can't begin to empty the hole filled by desperate seed.
Then a light of hope opens up the hopeless in me.
Beaming real and complete I feed. Desperations power gone, I find I'm at peace with me.

Becky jo Gibson

Cheers to you, my beloved.
Beautiful brown eyes
Framed by curled lashes
Crinkled with a contagious smile.
A honking laugh
Accompanied by wit.
Intelligence and emotion.
Honest but guarded.
Every kiss,
Every touch,
Every glance,
Cherished.
Burning like fire,
Put me out with rain.
Cheers to me, as I sit.
Wishing,
Hoping,
Praying.
Maybe you’ll give me a last chance.
Knowing it won’t happen.
Blissfully torturing myself
All the same.
- [h.r.]

Another asphalt kiss
A black tarp love affair
Creatures of the night
Roaming this neon dream
Filthy but gilded in glamor
An air of desperation
Hangs like two forlorn lovers
Will it be a night of romance
Or do their pleas pass you by?
A rose to be forsaken
For its thorns are many
Or will you succumb to temptation
No matter how fraught with peril?
Is not love but a wondrous con artist
Casting your gaze elsewhere
To cast its hand into your pocket?
Choose wisely wanderer
These decrepit streets take no prisoners

We didn't say much that night,
but the silence loudly spoke.
We were burning moonlight
watching it go up in a puff of smoke.
We both felt the fire,
but it couldn't last long.
For one of us or the other
the heat would soon be gone.
There was no fear, just separation;
the night bore a connotation
of terminal proportions,
and an impending self-condemnation.
Awash there in the silence,
watching the night hang overhead,
we sat, as though watching kin
slowly slipping away in their deathbed.
Like, we know that it's coming,
there's no impending sense of dread.
We'll say a prayer and throw some flowers
Then both sleep in our own separate bed.
We almost force a smile
when our eyes meet.
It takes a while of trying
Before we both look back at our feet.
Still, she leans into me,
Closes her eyes against my shoulder.
The only warmth left between us
So I wrap her up and hold her
and we sit there,
cloaked in the waning night.
The clouds have blanketed the stars
and we've burned up all the moonlight.