Let you go

I am watching the afternoon dissolve.

The light is fading. The trees and shrubs, the borders and paths, the fences and lawns are merging softly into one another. The last, muted. copper rays of the sun are reflected back briefly and wistfully in the leaded windows of the house.

I am in my quiet room.The melancholy music recently playing has stopped. The absence of piano, violin and guitar has left an almost holy stillness.

Like a church hushed for prayer.

Despite myself, despite my promises to me, I am thinking of you. I have let your presence slide gently into the gathering gloom. I hear the faintest echo of your laughter. I catch your scent lingering like a sigh.

Both, of course, are impossible.

I feel a need to write something for you. A poem to send. Words to make you remember. And perhaps to regret.

But I know I won’t.

I will simply sigh and switch on the desk lamp. I will banish the ghosts and shadows and pale dancers to the sudden darkness that will press at my window.

Yet just for a moment I will sit here.

Hanging on.

Until I can bear to let you go.

Before everything

I wish you had known me then.
Before the years.
Before the suit, the business, the money.
Before the ex, the cars, the friends.
Before the affairs, the half-truths, the lies, the compromise.
Before the lines, the shadows, the hollows, the grey.
Before the words came so much harder to write.
I wish you had known me then
Before the her

Back

It has taken me at least a hundred lifetimes to get you out of my system.

I have known you forever. Adored you forever. Wanted you forever.

Different names. Different places. Different times.

A dozen centuries or more. Always you.

Your beauty, your body, your soul,

Winning you, Owning you,

Then losing you.

And now

you are back

What never was

I knew her name

And I knew what it meant in her mother tongue.

I knew her beauty. The eloquent eyes, the exquisite lips, the purity of her skin, the rich, lustrous black hair. The rise of her cheekbones and proud set of her nose

I knew her shape. The body of a goddess, a model, a girl. A walking fantasy to turn heads.

I knew a little of her mind. I knew some of her hopes and fears. And I knew the dark fantasies she never shared with anyone.

I knew too there was a gulf between us that would never be bridged.

I knew when I had lost her. Before she had even found the words.

Yet it is not what was lost that leaves my heart so bruised and bare.

It is what might have been

and never was.