"Later"

Our love is losing its gripping,
like acrobats whose hands are slipping.
We pay too little attention
to each other’s intention.
We ignore the shading
and are too quickly abrading.

What started this downward turn?
Was it a careless spurn?
Was it an angry moment
that began the foment?

What started with loving laughter,
even through the mornings after,
has become at times judgmental,
or what’s worse, inconsequential.

I feel I’m spinning into a cosmic shift,
tumbling freefall from your world, adrift.
Are you pulling from me or am I letting go?
All I know is that it hurts me so.

your love awoke me like morning
silently quietly persistently

it slowly warmed me
from head to toe, to and fro

it pushed me into day
from a reluctant night

it brought me sight
gently into light

you have birthed my joy

love washed over me
an ocean of emotion
providing a shore

desiccated leaves
I crunch in my weary steps
sound of journey’s end

We have evolved, you and I.
When first we met, we were merely cartoons.
Now we are portraits.

From silhouettes to textured shadows,
We have added colors and hues to our relationship.

We have managed to jump the branes to different dimensions.
We live in a different world from other people, private and intimate.

Did we at first skate past each other on icy ponds, before we felt the warmth of one another? Did our images and souls meld in the chill air?

How have our wild neurons grasped the reality of our love?
How did we roil up our emotions to break the impassive surface?

Are you merely an extension of my dreams and delusions?
Do we love each other or only love the perception of each other?
As the philosopher George Berkeley conjectured,
the only reality may just be a perception.

But if that is so, I don’t care. My only reality is here with you.
Whether it’s a dream or not, it’s the world I want to inhabit forever.