life has drastically evolved in our 26 years together,
and we, too, are not the same,
but, still, your smile softens the sharp edges of this hard world,
flapping its wings so high in the air it falls upon me like a meteorite,
its iridescent fabric trailing red thunder and liquid gold,
planting in my heart the kind of hopeful purple only communion can produce
I love you
as we sit in the quiet,
I wonder,
is enough of me still located here?
I lead a pretty normal life:
I work, I have conversations,
I make grocery lists and cook dinners,
I parent my children,
I am a wife;
I am not always stuck inside my selves
but it feels so often that part of myself is in this place,
while, at the same time,
the most important parts are in a different place,
a place that can’t be accessed in the mundane,
a place so deep I need to be alone to open,
be alone to sift through and allow to be free
you gently break the quiet;
you speak to me in your raspy voice and I can hear you,
I can talk and follow along the well worn paths we’ve created in our many years together,
but my most important parts are somewhere else,
and I can’t seem to locate them
I’ve been stuck in a sinister roundabout,
involuntary traveling in circles,
swallowing so many words
but there is devastation in silence,
and my tongue in not well-trained in sitting still for very long,
so, sometimes, when I do speak, it sparks,
the words rippling and licking at our bridges to burn
I don’t know what to do, then,
because it’s so strange to want so badly to talk and wish for silence at the same time,
to feel so uprooted and stuck,
so lost
so my idle hands rip and crinkle and unwrap,
and I gnaw and choke and chew,
trying like hell to drown the flames,
seeking for and feeding the source in the deepest pit of my stomach,
but it only manages to metastasize into rolls and folds,
unable to stifle the unbearable heat
and when I do manage to let it all bubble and rumble it’s way to the surface,
I shiver, despite the swelter,
because all I can do is wonder:
what if, even though we see that all our mistakes are forgivable,
when we hold hands and lay time flat,
silencing the maelstrom into white noise,
we find that nothing we had hoped and expected to evolve actually changes?
what if this is as good as it gets?
we were skin to skin,
our heat a ravenous, tangible entity between us,
and I could feel myself thawing beneath it,
softening around the edges,
like the petals of a freshly-emerged flower ready for bloom
we spent hours exploring one another,
all night,
night after endless night
all I remember is white everywhere:
the white glow of moonlight creeping around the edges of the curtains,
the white-hot need bursting behind my eyelids,
the whites of his eyes staring so deeply into me,
his teeth beaming from between his lips in a grin, a growl, a pleasure-pain grimace,
his pale white skin against the soft gray sheets
I’d never known skin could be so luminous and translucent,
a network of purply-blue veins visible just beneath the surface,
like threads of color in white marble,
threads that connected us so completely,
I couldn’t tell where he ended and I began
through flesh and unmetered time,
I absorbed his calm,
his vulnerability,
his joy
I said yes to things I previously would not have;
I reveled in this new person I became,
this less afraid person,
this free person he inspired me to be
we fucked all the time;
I was consumed with lust,
perpetually, urgently hungry for him,
for this coupled metamorphosis
l needed to touch him,
meld with him,
know him,
to shed all the layers of contrived bullshit –
for him to know me
I couldn’t get enough
it wasn’t silence exactly,
his “I don’t know’s”,
nor were they words of optimism,
promises of intent, of partnership
they pressed against me like lead,
those words of indifference,
a mirror reflecting myself back to me,
the voice in my head louder than the silence in the room
the chronic crackling catches
on the lumps in my throat
with each inhale
every forced expiration
is a labored, hollow whistling
keeping me awake
tiny punctures in the fragile lining
widen with every blink,
becoming jagged fissures
until I gasp and grasp
and try desperately to grab onto anything
that will help me patch the holes
so I close my eyes
and line these bankrupt lungs
with your whispered I love you’s
in the dark
-image via Pinterest, art by Codex Anotomicus
his eyes saw right through me,
a tender microscope
his heart echoed time,
a soulful jazz that enveloped
and his strong arms around me
felt like hope
so I held on tight,
and never let go
-image via Tumblr, source unknown; older poem slightly revised
I thought I knew about a lot of things before I met you
but I never knew what slow, deep kisses meant,
or that they could last all night long
I never knew what the smell of the first morning breeze could do as my head lay upon your chest,
or how that breeze could carry me throughout the day
I never knew how my own chest could ache in your absence,
or that I could smile all the way to my fingertips when we joined again
I never knew I could get butterflies deep in my belly every time you kissed my neck,
or that my desire for you could consume me
I never knew that shared laughter could cure almost anything,
and shared tears could say much more than words
I never knew I could feel fire in my veins when you hurt,
or that my heart’s fullness could spill over when you smile
I never knew I could need like this,
that I could feel swaddled by another so completely,
I can finally rest
I thought I knew all about hope before I met you –
but that was before I believed in magic
-Image credit 7-themes.com; This is for M, the love of my life!; slightly revised older poem
I am your poem,
your intonation and emphasis,
the comma, your pause,
your exclamation
I am your poem,
your meter and rhyme,
the period, your end,
your alliteration
I am your poem
your metaphor and simile,
the hyphen, your joint,
your connotation
I am your words,
melodic and lyrical,
the ones you don’t speak,
your personification
I am your poem
-image found on Tumblr, source unknown; shared as part of dVerse Poet Pub’s Open Link Night #191 in 2017 and revised/edited for this Valentine’s Day
when he kissed me,
I was pure, cosmic combustion,
an exploding urge from some uncharted depth,
stirring this frenetic need to break free from something I didn’t even realize was holding me back,
while sinking into this enveloping feeling I never wanted to end;
it was the quickening of some strange, welcomed metamorphosis
whatever was happening between us had this unspoiled sheen to it,
leaving behind a layer of something magical that came off on my fingers when I touched it,
like the precious powder from a moth’s delicate wing,
something so intimate and sacred that was meant to be grasped,
but still set free to fly
-artwork by Gustav Klimt, The Kiss
