I have not lost you yet
But I cannot have you.
Where I can tend to
the unfinished list
that will come to hurt
too much to acknowledge.
You never got to fall
in love with my voice
the way I fell into
the sweet timbre of yours.
Every beautiful sound and pause,
inflection, break, and what went unsaid,
I would have listened so closely,
held tight to what you did not say.
I never saw your face light
the dark of our bed
when lightning streaked
across the late skyline.
Illuminating you in ways
I should have taken
more time to memorize.
Like the night you said
I had to finally forgive myself,
no one has told me that
before or since then.
Now I can measure
the unceasing heat
embodied with another body
that I have never seen.
This is the slow bloom where
I can move through time
and not skew memory.
Where I can tend to
the unfinished list
that will come to hurt
too much to acknowledge.
You know I am more fragile than I let on
and have already seen me cry enough,
I would much rather be alone for that.
You have seen me explain in every way,
that the faint hum through skin bone,
the ache for something that you
needed time to understand,
one always swelled in me.
Something I’ve always felt
deep within the blood,
that we’re all born with
a mysterious other half missing.
And we spend years
looking to name this,
looking to be complete
and to complete another.
I was able to name my own
when becoming only yours,
and I’ve already asked the question
and can never again speak the words:
Is it so wrong that you will always
be more than enough for me?
The unfinished pieces,
sonatas missing notes,
the exposure to elements that
may prove to be far too much.
Some of these may
seal an open heart
and never let anyone
near or in again.
But I want to tell you I almost ran
after handing you all my secrets,
it was almost too much to know
you could hold them and still love me.
That you could see every wound,
know me in the most intimate ways.
Know the impulse to drift into you,
to make love again, to cling to each other,
desire the constant note ringing inside,
you knew I could never be lonely there
in the pulse of our most unguarded moment.
You have seen me after our rush,
the sheer liquification of us,
merging and shaking like limbs
turned into terrified wings.
The softer edges in the comedown,
your eyes and pores shimmering,
glowing with a shared essence,
the unspoken conduits between us.
I can now measure
the loneliness embodied
with another body
I have never seen.
This is the lethal bloom
where little things become
shards in our hourglass.
Where I can tend to
the unfinished list
that will come to hurt
too much to acknowledge.
I could note the tether between
what I will miss the most
and what you exhaled.
I could feel tears fleeing both eyes
as cold raindrops battered your house,
the home I made in your heart
and stayed inside of all along.
I couldn’t figure out how
to give you the sun,
and the stars burned
too much to touch,
but I can try the moon
to remember your glow.
And I still sense
the demanding myths,
the growing urges,
split like atoms destined
for different shapes.
I fathomed more than you knew
when becoming only yours.
How the earth moved beneath you
as hands cupped your face before a kiss,
much like a fresh teardrop
or a candle’s flickering oval glow.
Not to protect a fragile creature,
but to shield true beauty with armor,
those shapes and more were both
precise and hard to describe.
How your words touch me
in ways they should not,
fluttering over my body
before we were entangled.
How I could find your words
swimming in what was unspoken,
unfold them into lines that flowed
as rivers of your hunger and warmth.
Or when my heart became like terrified bird,
only calming when placed in your soft hands,
the most gentle grip stilling turbulence,
slowly drumming in tune when pressed together.
I tucked away the amplified moment after,
some are meant to belong to just us,
I can graze the surface of more that
I may never bring myself to list.
How I could never describe the way
I unravelled at just the touch of your hand
the way your features softened
in a simple kiss contracting the universe.
And how you looked upon me once as if
seeing the sun rise for the first time,
then as if seeing that fiery orb sink
below the horizon to reveal night’s beauty,
how you turn to mist now before a touch,
wisps warming my fingertips with memory.
But I hold on to those looks even now
because you looked at me
as if I was actually beautiful,
I want to list how I could
hold onto that forever.
Or how I should have put you first sooner,
how there are no words for breaking someone,
or why I said some things I never meant to,
sweet nothings that were always true
but could have been deeper like your beauty,
or like words we exchanged that were
able to cut into the most fragile core.
I still cannot measure the depths
that breathe for you every day,
I cannot measure which puncture
may come to hurt the most.
It may eventually pass over us
and I’ll mark it like seasons,
gentle mist surrounding after
rain in the early spring night.
The darker longings in summer,
in heat wrapped around skin
with a quiet but absolute ferocity.
The faint scent of autumn
carried in breezes that gently
pull me deep into your sweetness
before the cold can ever touch.
Winter’s last kiss radiating on lips that
trembled with whispered promises
of so much more to come .
I’ll mark it in the unceasing beat
that you no longer seem
to hear or dance to.
I’ll mark it in this lethal bloom,
where I have not lost you.
Where I cannot have you.
Embodied with another body
that I have never seen.
