the sun entered your eyes
when they met hers
and the way you held her in photographs
defines love in a way my words cannot.
i can see what love is,
but my heart is closed and cold, chiseled
from unforgiving stone, and I will never
understand the warmth.
I cannot see the way you look at me
or if the moon resides in your eyes.
I do not like photographs; the way they
distort the perfect
pictures in our minds.
So I may never know the definition of us.
She’s closed herself off
behind her walls
because if she kicks them down, they’ll
fall for you
all
over
again;
and you will sit amid the rubble,
admiring the way
the sky greys just before the storm begins
in her heart.
We are so much
alike that
I sometimes wonder what parts of
me
don’t have pieces
to match up with
you.
I want what I cannot
put into words:
the dousing of the flame
which reminds me you are not mine.
The silencing of my thoughts
which day in, day out
turn, turn, turn to you.
To dam the flow of
you that seeps into my dreams.
To snuff your constant presence
in all of me.
They say
there are two ways out.
I must pick my poison.
You wrapped your finger around the loose end
and pulled and pulled and pulled until
it broke;
an absentminded afterthought
hurriedly shoved into the armrest of my car
on your way out.
The hemmed end of your shirt left frayed and
blowing in the wind as
you walked away;
a sad reminder of how it used to be before
it’s innards were pulled out.
Weeks fall away and it still sits there—
the small ball of pink thread;
the mark of your territory on my heart.
The last piece of you. The only thing
holding us together.
Even when i can’t see you,
you are here
in the rivers of my mind, flowing
from one current to the next, so that
you are not always a straight line, but
a jumble that i sometimes lose sight of for a moment
behind the mountains and hills.
i feel you again and again and again and
each time, just before you disappear, i know you
will reappear in the bends of the river;
you always will.
My heart is anchored to you,
and when goodbye leaves
your lips, it takes my heart
with it.
With cupped hands I show you
the parts of my soul nobody else has
touched.
I am prepared for your eyes
to widen in disgust,
for you to take them
and crush them and
throw them away.
But you hold them,
you know them,
you love them.
And gently, carefully,
you place my darkness back
in my shaking hands.
You have seen all of me and yet
there is only love in your eyes.
Protect yourself, his warm words tickle my ear.
But to protect myself from
you only makes me vulnerable
to the rest of the world.
Silenticel 