To S, for the last time…
Your smile, your
skin, your
hair & the soothing evening air,
the city pink as the sun began to
sink.
All this
& more
now lives
below a gravestone
alone;
dreams that breed with soil beneath
the surface:
an afterlife of nights spent with you &
our youth
we so carelessly wasted in
a bright & beautiful display…
I don’t want to visit the grave
very often these days.
Do you?
The reasons why
hide
& you don’t try to find them.
Blind
instinct guides
& elides through space & time
until
you no longer know
how it is
that you find yourself
in this
dark forest.
The consummation of
sorrow & regret
of impulse & blind intent,
the attempt
to escape
makes the mistake
of believing that things we leave behind
will somehow change
or else disappear completely
when finally we
return:
the
gentle susurration
of bad-faith held
to itself & nothing else,
excuses
running too thin;
the hideous birth
of conjoined twins,
who want only to be loved,
& are as beautiful
as they are ugly,
just like us.
& then when
I awoke
the morning light made me choke as
I remembered
how the gentle susurration blended
with the birdsong & the light began to
curve like the branches above us
to touch,
briefly,
skin within which poison blends with pollen
& flowers blossom before I pluck them
to place in your hair where
they will wither & die.
The past still lingers in the present,
& refuses to leave with the grace
of living things.
This is what regret means:
never to forget someone
or something;
knowing of all the lives that could have been;
to touch,
briefly,
your skin
for the last time.
For A
Once
I loved someone,
in the same way,
& for the same reason
I love the moon:
you don’t need to see it every day,
to know that you’ll see it again;
you can’t always see it, but
you know it’ll always be there…
…& then
months became years & those years
became the unnoticed mouldering kiss;
a distance turning stale,
old & cold as the
empty bed.
So lonely not knowing how to explain
until too late,
& strange to find how changed
the feeling is when found again;
the pain so far away
just like the Moon.
