Tag: love

I wish people would stop
assuming we’re together,
and saying what a great couple
we’d make. at first
I liked it; I thought surely now
you’ll see how we’re perfect
for each other, how obvious it is
to everyone that we should date.
but now that you’ve told me
again
that you’re not feeling it,
that there’s no future
for us in that way,
all this commentary
from the peanut gallery
is just rubbing salt
in my wounds.

yes, I know. tonight’s
complimentary bum
was clearly trying to soften us up
in the hopes of getting that elusive
pocket of change.
but even a stopped clock
is right
twice a day. it’s too bad.
our glorious possibility
could be written in the sky
in letters of fire
eighteen feet tall,
and you’d still claim
not to see it.

as I watched your set,
I could feel
how my face and eyes and heart and soul
were lit up from within
by how very much
I love you, how much
I need and want you
and I felt that anyone
who glanced at me
even for a moment
would see everything
written on my countenance
because – as I’ve been told
so many times –
I have a glass face. I was glowing
like a candle, like a miniature sun,
quietly burning away
in my little corner of your life.
you might not have seen it –
and I cannot blame you in the slightest,
being that you were pretty busy
expressing your own wonderful art –
but I felt myself shining
like a lighthouse
in the fog. If you’re ever lost
in the dark, I hope you’ll let me
guide your way home
and that I can be that refuge,
that steady burning heartfire
of warmth and light
for you to reheat
your dormant passions
and reignite the pilot light
on the stove within your chest.

I think you don’t quite understand
the strange way
my brain and heart work.
I spend my nights in company –
lately mostly yours, though
not nearly enough
alone time (tête-à-tête, if you will,
and oh, how I would love to)
to satisfy my heart –

and then I go home
alone
to find that one of the cats
has puked on the bed
and there’s only leftovers
to reheat and reluctantly,
eventually eat. I play a sad song
fifty times on repeat, smoke
too many cigarettes,
compose, post and delete three poems,
four selfies, thirteen tweets.

and by the time I lie between
the sheets, my mind
ranges far and wide,
reviewing every moment
every look
every dumb thing
I said and/or did
every friend I insulted or offended,
every other man
I led on and talked to, flirted with
because
I couldn’t bear being
in the same room with you
without being with you,
but especially carefully
I must test the memory
of every accidentally
-on-purpose touch
and imagine the faintest hint
of your response,
seeking to detect the slightest bit
of warmth in your eyes
softness in your voice
electric resonance in your skin.

I feel again all the sensations
and my skin is tingling
as if I’m holding a live wire
but this time I am safe
from myself and from you.
I can’t do anything about these
delicate, intense, intimate
feelings. there’s no danger
that I’ll say something
stupidly real, no risk
of my hand grenade heart
igniting some long-banked
answering fire in you.

eventually I wear myself out.
sleep ambushes me
and I dream fragmented shards
of a mirror world
where we are both brave. waking up
feels like being dragged
up from the bottom
of the ocean; I rush out again
with the tide’s swift and certain need,
drawn by you, my lonely moon,
and by the time I
see you again in the flesh,
I’m so exhausted from all my
solitary imaginings
and agonized reviews
that I can barely hold up my end
of the conversation. I’m sorry.
I’ll try harder to be more present
in your presence
and less intensely tortured
by your absence
when we are apart.

I’m sorry
I sent you that heart.
not because I didn’t mean it,
but because I do.
I’m so used
to sending them to my girlfriends
and saying I love you
every five minutes
that my fingers just
ran away with me.
these symbols are
so much less freighted
when the love in question
is that of Phileos and Agape.
enter the spectre of Eros
and the whole thing falls apart;
the center cannot hold.

so it’s okay. I understand.
if you’re not ready
to accept my heart,
electronic or otherwise,
feel free
to change the subject.

when we’re out
in public –
whether we arrived together
or just made our separate ways
to the place
where we both
spend most of our time
these days –
I sit close at the slightest opportunity
make every excuse
to touch you –
even just a knee under the table
a hand on your arm
when I’m making a point –
but you,
you keep your distance.

is it because
you want to preserve
that slim buffer of space
between our bodies
to make it obvious
that we’re not an item
so that if a younger, cuter girl
wants to flirt with you, she knows
you’re still available
and that I
have no claim
upon your heart?

or is it because you fear
that once you get too close
we’ll be like magnets;
the pull will be too strong
science will doom us
to be locked together
and you won’t be able
to break free?

or even that you can’t believe
I want to be so close
that I’m doing it on purpose?

I hope it’s one of the latter
but I very much fear
it’s the former.

if only you knew
that your touch
far from repelling me
instead thrills me
comforts me –
warms the very
cockles of my heart, even –
would that change your answer?

you hold me together.
you paper over the cracks
in my head, in my heart
and keep them
until they can hold by themselves.

when I’m at my most shattered
you pick up the pieces,
carefully reassemble them –
nestling each shard
next to its neighbor,
pressing all the sharp-edged curves
back into place –
until my fault lines are all
filled in with gold.

so after you rescue my broken husk
from the trash heap that I
threw myself on in despair,
I’ll be all the more beautiful
for having been so
utterly destroyed.