It would take a tsunami to make my attention
Drift away from you while your words and
Your eyes anchor my mind firmly in your presence.
Even the stripping of the inside of my mouth
By particularly ferocious hot chocolate could not
Stop my mind from wanting to know what you'd say next.

Your every word was like a cliffhanger...
I had to know the next instalment, yet somehow
Nothing was an anticlimax...your words were
Always worth waiting for, because they always
Made up something new to me, a picture of
Some aspect of you that I had not yet envisaged
That forms part of the collection of beauty
Of which you are made.

And now I find that beauty haunting me
Through recollections of your absorbingly dark eyes
And that distinctive way you move your lower lip
When you talk, and the cycle of putting down
Your coffee cup then pushing up your sleeves and
Resting your arms on the table.

Everything plays back in my memory, like the way
You look to one side, then down at the floor then
Up to the ceiling before your eyes alight on
Some invisible point on the table in front of you,
And that feeling of your beauty pervading
The longest forgotten corners of my soul and
Surrounding me like a warm and reassuring blanket
Whose comfort I never want to leave.

All I can do now is hope that I am someday
Granted an audience with you again, so that
My mind can fill up with recollections of
Your smile and your eyes and your hands and
Your hair to frame all the pictures of you
That your words paint on the canvas of my soul.

02/21/2003

Posted on 02/22/2003
Copyright © 2024 Richard Vince