It rained for three straight days
during my first visit
to you.
Fitting. I should have expected as much.
Especially if it corresponds to your happiness,
I can only be more thrilled
about rain
and what it brings down with it
and the slates it washes clean.

We drank with reservations
and read poetry with gusto
and fell to the floor with love
as the thunder clapped across the
valley
and the rain poured from our skin.

You are small,
not even close to helpless,
but I would face down anything
so that your hands may stay and fit
so delicately in mine and
so your lips would find mine
again.

When we met, finally,
and I felt your frame fall into mine,
trusting me enough for that
so soon,
I was honored,
and I knew that the fears I had
about what this would be like,
what you might be like,
what we might be like,
were unfounded,
and very complicatedly so.

Wouldn't it have been easier
to despise the other?
But no,
instead we fell into rhythm
as if we had never been out of sync,
we fell  into and onto each other
time and again
in ways that could only be described as
perfection.

I saw you gaze onto me
with a mystique only Picasso himself
would be able to render,
so I lost myself in your eyes
with words I've known for
long and with thoughts I could
finally say.

It rained for three straight days,
but on the day I left
the sun beamed through the sky.
So I left,
with kisses and kind words,
and it wasn't until I was on
the excruciating road back
that I realized
I was leaving home
for the second time
in only one trip.

"Go on"
Shaking hands.
Unsteady heart.
Heavy breath.

You look at me as if you haven't eaten in years, and I am
The favorite dish you've savoured on the
tip of your Tongue.

I've had lovers before.
I've lost my breath with another man's name in my fading gasp.

But this is a different chapter.
No.
A different genre, written by gentle hands with an unsteady composure.

Birthmarks and fur
Fingernails and pearls of sweat dancing on the tip of your nose.
At last, I know what it feels like to be devoured.
Finally
I am
Naked.

When sleep comes
Just like the snow
And settles like a blanket
On your toes

And covers both the day and night
In flakes of thought
And sheets of white -

Hold tight –
Don’t be afraid
Breathe in and take
A moment of the dreams you’ve made
For your tomorrow…


Walk among the wonders
Through the powder,
Melting tracks
Into the silence of the night –

And know –
This sleep will come and go…
Just like the snow.

With shaking hands you touch me.
"It's been a while"  you say.
With every insecure movement
I can feel the inner demons on
your shoulders.
For every tremble, every ******,  any short breath.  
I witness my demons
Raising a sledgehammer
Breaking down
Your walls.

Your fingertips read my scars as if they were written in
Braille.

Read me.
Devour me whole.
Allow me to forever be your favourite
Literature.

You are so proud
Of your defenses.

The strong fundament of constructions built to keep everyone out.

And you in.

With eyes narrow from fatigue
And worries, I gaze at the
Traces of time on my bedroom
Ceiling.

Cracks and flaking paint.
Do nightmares and dreams
Leave their imprints
In wood, like silent poltergeists

Remembered; collected;
Guarded; stored?
Invisible scars on dead surfaces.
So unlike those on me

That she finds with drowzy
Fingertips in the dark,
When I visit and cannot
Sleep from the alien music

Of the Oslo City night. It
Lacks the sound of wind
In trees playing with leaves
That usually make up my

Bedtime soundtrack.
I awoke from dreaming she'd
Left me; driving away with
Some ex and not looking back.

I ran until my
Legs buckled. Ran after her.
I sure hope her poor walls
Don't remember.

The Room of Dancing Shadows,
undulating across the wall,
like ****** Persian ballerinas,
making no sound at all.
Reaching, retreating, a mosaic form,
eternally shifting the dark shade.
Pictures of no light in a flux,
remain fragmented, cold, unmade.
Hypnotising, random shapes in black,
swim serenely, start to slide.
The Room of Dancing Shadows
holds its fear deep, deep inside.


© Pagan Paul (03/10/16)