Shawn L. Bird

I told you

I’d love you forever

You told me you loved me

and we’d be friends forever.

I meant every deluded nuance.

You figured optimism works out

but you also said you couldn’t answer

to what would happen if I snuck into your room

and you woke to my face hovering above you.

That intriguing notion made me giggle at the joke.

But you kept your door locked, just in case.

Did you hear the door knob rattle?

Then the plane took off,

without me hiding in your luggage

as you’d suggested I could.

Our next phone call clarified

the kindness of lies.

and the length reality stretches

to cling to an illusion.

I’ve been grateful for

the elasticity of spurious delusion

every day of my life.

I craft my reality in my imagination:

You are whoever I make you to be.

Do I cover you with armour?

Compel piano mastery?

Some loves last through time:

mythical love need not be mocked.

What you hear, is never what truly was.

It’s what was crafted to tell the tale that needed to be told.

You are a character in the love story,

and I can always kill you off in

literary impunity.

.

Shape poem of a chess piece.  Clear?  Metaphor of the game.  Get it?