i am vague to the first time i ever saw
your face, or approached you as fire in
my own veins. how sad you must have been
then, how hollow discreet. you invited me
over on a morning it rained, your voice
a marble flag of retreat.
we wanted to live alone, asleep on our sides,
subconscious, in dreams. we wanted singularity
and never to breathe.

for all of these things,
we were merely wrong.

sometimes i can see you from the veranda
as though you have just returned home
from the front-lines,
as though you are a pillar of fables,
of blood-earth and the defeat of victory,
your past your forever being.

we made no promises with words or a tongue
with lines taller than the shadows of our
youths, we pushed no vows through teeth,
nor communicated with towers bristling,
we are words written and quiet lies,
pathological imprints in frozen sands,
mirroring vessels of stumbling through motions,
going on its endless reprieve.

for all of your halcyon days traded black,
dead before they were long.


i want to say i loved you but love you couldn't receive,
i want to say we were sixteen together in every stain
of life's seething history, wonderment with our bodies
merely enchanted schemes,
but your smile belies your tranquility,
and we can never go back, we were never in-step,
you and i were never together,
the fleeting tides pulling blankets
over the florida keys.

sometimes i can hear your voice above the beating
of my own heart, or lost alone in crowds with
merriment blooming above the dark, berlin walls of
my own defenses crumbling into the chaos:sea.
i think now they know whenever i look away to
distance beating,
i am entombing the laughter of what was never
your sadness into me.

11/02/2009

Posted on 11/02/2009
Copyright © 2024 Michelle Floyd