Floating
by Michael R. Burch

Memories flood the sand’s unfolding scroll;
they pour in with the long, cursive tides of night.

Memories of revenant blue eyes and wild lips
moist and frantic against my own.

Memories of ghostly white limbs ...
of soft sighs
heard once again in the surf’s strangled moans.

We meet in the scarred, fissured caves of old dreams,
green waves of algae billowing about you,
becoming your hair.

Suspended there,
where pale sunset discolors the sea,
I see all that you are
and all that you have become to me.

Your love is a sea,
and I am its trawler—
harbored in dreams,
I ride out night’s storms;
unanchored, I drift through the hours before morning,
dreaming the solace of your warm *******,
pondering your riddles, savoring the feel
of the explosions of your hot, saline breath.

And I rise sometimes
from the tropical darkness
to gaze once again out over the sea . . .
You watch in the moonlight
that brushes the water;

bright waves throw back your reflection at me.

This is a poem I wrote as a teenager. It has been published by Penny Dreadful, Romantics Quarterly, Boston Poetry Magazine, The Chained Muse and Poetry Life & Times. Keywords/Tags: love, romantic, romanticism, mermaid, siren, Lorelei, sea, night, dreams, eyes, lips, limbs, *******, breath, sunset, surf, waves, caves, moon, moonlight, seaweed, hair, storms

She is made of the fires of Pompeii,
The waters of the Mediterranean,
The leaves of Tir na Nog.

She is the eye in my storming skies,
The confused time between dark and dawn,
Violet, calm, navy, bright and ordinary.
She is my Lorelei, my forest fairy.
Her voice paints my glasses in green and gold,
Hues of sunsets and city lights
Dance across the horizon.
Only I can see them.

The ocean is full of stars in direct sunlight,
And so too am I under her gaze.

She is the fires of Pompeii,
The waters of every ocean,
The whole forest of Tir na Nog.

To her,
I am a rusting penny,
A grain of rice sitting in the cupboard.
She is my Bridge of Sighs, she is La Seine,
And I am her bright red pen marking suggestions,
Never corrections.
She is my Lorelei, and I her nothing.

All I want, though, is to be a part of a disaccharide, and never dissolve. Someone I can grow old with, share a bench under the Space Needle, take photographs of me when I'm not looking. I don't want to be old news to them. I want to be the newspaper they pick up every day, read my stories, and know tomorrow will still happen, there will still be more stories to read. I would very much like to be in someone's life the way I wish for someone to be in mine.
I don't want to spend my whole life searching, chasing, waiting for you.

You put my head up
Among the stars
And help me hear
The cosmos sing.

To me it was epiphany
But it didn’t mean a thing
To you, at least not enough
To realize I was enchanted
Like a school kid of twelve
With that first strong crush
That turns the heart to mush
And the knees to jelly.

It puts a fire in the belly
That time can’t quench.
I felt my gut wrench
And clench and flatten out
So much I felt a shout
Coming on like a scream
But felt that would seem
To make me look insane.

I am doing it all again,
That childhood love attack
Was dragging me back
And away from today
When my heart wanted to say
Words that meant something,
But to you nothing.

My head is still in the stars
Which must be where you are
Because you are not here.
Nowhere near any more
I was just a love chore
And, your work done
You are gone.