Brick and Mortar: On Saying Goodbye

You dropped the vase of flowers you never really bought
before you had the chance to even put them in my hands,
two days after you told me you missed me, and two days
after I opened every door, aired out every closet,
and laid bare for you every corner, and crevice,
along with all the contents of my chest of drawers.
Two days later, and instead of receiving flowers
I received the silence of fear and foreboding.
I won't deny I pushed you further, and I won't deny
I regret so many words.
But if there was ever a hand or heart that wanted
to hold and guide you away from the darkness
into which you so consistently let yourself slip,
mine were the hands and the heart that had always
been there that you would never see.
Especially now, as strength fills these arms,
yet the ache of bitterness sets into the brick and
mortar I feel underneath my palms, between us.
Unscalable walls, perhaps, spreading out behind me,
or, at least, barriers just now set that feel impervious
to my shouts and my fists. Again, it seems,
and for a final time, we've locked ourselves apart.
Soon, in some distant future, when we arrive
on the shores of our memories, we'll
examine the ruins of this monstrous wall we created
and realize that it never really existed, except in
the words we kept using to shield ourselves from hurt.
And that if we had merely turned around and looked,
Face-to-face, beyond the words behind which we had hid,
we would not have found the brick and mortar
that we felt was there, behind us,
but merely would have met each other's eyes,
the reflections of ourselves in one another's gaze the only
walls that stopped us, the only fear that formed us,
and the only remorse we, in the end, could not overcome.
And while I never saw your face or held those flowers,
and while you never saw or heard from me again,
That mingling of remorse and pain, yearning and love,
and the unquenchable desire for your own happiness,
even outside my own,
Will safely be solidified, like brick and mortar,
within the walls of my heart, where the memory
and arms of you will forever be secured.