Singing the blues in twelve bars,
Each less respectable than the last,
Is how I drown my questionable sorrows
These days: leaving the nest, I did not
So much fly as plummet, the ground
A more welcome destination than the sky.

She went everywhere that I did not,
Spreading wings that I never found,
Making a graceful, beguiling silhouette
Against the bright blue skies of youth.

Were numbers something she never
Needed to worry about as they
Tortured me in their staccato barks,
Sharp and unyielding and eternally
Uncompromising? The books on her shelves
Were enough to keep her in the ink
Of imagination long after they ceased
To sustain me, it seems.

This is a tale of two cities
That may actually have been
The same place after all;
The streets merely chose to lead
Our feet along different paths.

Perhaps the only part of her
For which I long is the joy that
I always saw on her smiling face
As my heart felt nothing of the sort,
As I wondered why so many people
Chose to put themselves through
This same torture, week after week.

She made sense of the whole thing
As no one else could. Maybe her joy
Did not lift my spirits as I thought,
But merely fed my despair as
I tried, in vain, to replicate
In my heart what I saw in hers.

01/22/2019

Posted on 03/03/2019
Copyright © 2024 Richard Vince