My body still searches for you
In a sea of bedsheets and stuffed animals.

I try to mimic the warmth of your arms around me.
I, once again, fail miserably...
Just like I did when you packed up and left.

My hands sleepily clasp at nothingness.
I am half asleep,
Just at the stage before waking up,
Desperately trying to find any semblance of you.

I was always told my insomnia was the reason for my lack of rest.
But what do we call it when I can not fall asleep without you beside me?

Life at this moment you cant be bullshitting
me. There isn't an April fools that's getting
even close to what we find ourselves hitting
any where near to this.  it's so unfitting.

But no matter the **** hitting the fan,  I haven't got
any bog roll. I can only poo outside before I'm caught.
But leaves are natures wipes and I'm dammed if aught
I'll sleep with skids on my sheets, but if I do I'll just smile.

But underneath I gag as the sweet corn is natures reminder
to wipe before, as they feel like coffee not  put through the grinder.
I feel like crap my legs woefully tanned, not because of the sun,
crap skidding my legs,  as if you lift the sheets its a gross viewfinder.

Ordinary Love
by Michael R. Burch

Indescribable—our love—and still we say
with eyes averted, turning out the light,
“I love you,” in the ordinary way

and tug the coverlet where once we lay,
all suntanned limbs entangled, shivering, white ...
indescribably in love. Or so we say.

Your hair’s blonde thicket’s thinned and tangle-gray;
you turn your back; you murmur to the night,
“I love you,” in the ordinary way.

Beneath the sheets our hands and feet would stray ...
to warm ourselves. We do not touch, despite
a love so indescribable. We say

we’re older now, that “love” has had its day.
But that which love once countenanced, delight,
still makes you indescribable. I say,
“I love you,” in the ordinary way.

Published by The Lyric, Romantics Quarterly, Mandrake Poetry Review, Carnelian, Poem Kingdom, Net Poetry and Art Competition, Famous Poets and Poems, FreeXpression, PW Review, Poetic Voices, Poetry Renewal, Poetry Life & Times; also winner of the 2001 Algernon Charles Swinburne Poetry Award

Keywords/Tags: Villanelle, ordinary, commonplace, everyday, love, bed, sheets, warmth, comfort, delight, limbs, night, light, white, hair, back, hands, feet, romance, passion, desire, longing, ***, intimacy

Betwixt these sheets,
I lie, ablaze.
In this blanket maze,
I run, deathless.
Hidden in vulnerable darkness,
I protect, ardently.
On my stomach, lying low,
I regret, somberly so.

We fell in love slowly,
Not at once.
It was never like the movies where we touched hands and softly gasped,
Never a look from across the room,
We didn’t have a magical moment.
We grew together like the leaves reach for the sun,
We gravitated together like magnets with a light pull.
We danced in empty kitchens,
Sleepily grabbing each other in cold nights,
Sharing the oxygen in the space we occupied together in white sheets.
You made me learn how to love my bed again,
Feel safe in an area I wasn’t made comfortable with,
I found myself feeling okay.