For Danielle, with love
.
Breaking heart
Taking future
Making mockery
I doubt the happy start,
wrapped in a painful ending,
rending all I believed,
feeling deceived
by the life we’d conceived.
Paths onward wending,
sending me,
setting me free.
Taking me,
creating me,
letting me
be,
Breaking past,
Taking a stance,
Making me dance.
A present for her
that’s really for him.
A present for him
that’s really for her.
Who needs a gift, really?
Presence is enough.
laughing eyes
begin to smoulder,
leaning in
gentle touch,
lips spark
in the darkness
electricity
between us
Three steps ahead
he strides forward,
in a rush,
as usual,
to get nowhere,
quickly.
He trails her behind him,
a fuming
sputter
of irritation,
gathering pressure,
ready to explode.
They’re talking love letters
and I hold my tongue
but not my lips.
The tilting corners betray me.
The envelopes with your distinctive hand writing
my name like a caress
glued down like a kiss,
all our hopes and dreams scribbled onto foolscap
by a fool to a fool
giddy from hormones.
And now love letters
are notes on the counter:
“Turn on the crockpot at noon”
“Running errands. Back around 3.”
Messages that mean you still
love me.
She wakes to the empty house
searching room by room for traces.
Has he gone?
But surely before such a journey
there would some formal leave taking?
A kiss?
A note?
He slipped away without a word,
and she is left bereft,
wondering why he finds it so easy to leave her,
wondering if she’s been devalued like Greek currency
or Bre-X stock.
No gold to mine after all.
Every couple crafts their own normal.
What’s familiar is what’s all right,
except when it’s not.
Being alone
Being lonely
There will always be too many cracks for
that broken pot to hold water;
it’s fine for bread,
though you
can’t live on bread alone.
Traces of something else,
gold veins of nourishment
are drawn with gestures
too easily forgotten,
so driving away is as simple a turning the key,
not as complicated as farewell.
When he apologized
she thought
This time it will be better
but
“I’m sorry,”
never seems to mean,
“I won’t do it again.”
If the broken pieces
didn’t blind him,
cripple him,
impale him,
perhaps he’d be free
to see her pain.
And seeing, to embrace it,
tame it, and more–
for her to show him
what she knows,
that slivers can be pulled,
that slats can be hammered,
that broken pieces can grow into crutches,
that the cracks of fractures
can be patched into a quilt
for a bed of nails.
Oh, he is broken, but
Comfort is where you find it.
It is lonely
Seeing ghosts of wagging tails
Dancing feet and twinkling eyes.
To remember joy made physical
Only because of my existence.
It is lonely
To catch the movements
From the corners of my eyes
Of furry bodies no longer present.
Grief is a hard, hard, hard burden.
But you,
Are lighter without the responsibility
Lighter with the freedom
Lighter from the consequences.
Lighter with the isolation
That is not loneliness to you.
But oh,
It is to me,
And my heavy heart struggles
With this burden of grief.
Knowing you. Knowing me.
Knowing the sacrifice you make
To bring some relief from grief,
To bring me a piece of joy again,
Wagging on the tip
of a tiny tail.
2016/04/08
Shawn L. Bird 