Was loving me more for me or more for you?

For you, For me

When loving me became for you and not for me
we crossed the threshold into the not-knowing, the not-understanding
or feeling each other - blindly, we traced fingertips
across brick walls blocking our view from one another's faces.
Those walls had been in place for days, perhaps weeks,
and even though every now and then we'd find the chink
through which to look or place our fingers, to touch one another
and see one another clearly,
I saw that on that day, as I lie sick in bed beneath you,
that I truly was beneath you, beneath the wall you'd built,
the tower you had built up above me to defend yourself
and protect your heart from what you thought was my
encroaching demolition of your soul and spirit.
Amazed, I felt, that I had done nothing but withered away
in your bed, and then was faced with the truth that you
were only watching me and waiting for me to stumble
so that you could leave and not feel guilty. Amazed,
knowing that then I needed you most, but the mortar was
already drying on your castle, and the moat was filling fast.
When loving me became for you and not for me,
I crossed a threshold of greater understanding, flailing in the moat
on the other side of the wall you built, trying to hold on
and not sure why you wouldn't hold me back. Watching you
creak and moan with the wind up in your tower,
not sure if you built it out of self-defense, or if you truly
didn't love me and had built those walls to house the heart
of someone else who entered while I was there,
sick in bed, not looking, but so, so trusting.
When loving me became for you and not for me,
I became all for you, and you were none for me,
and we became you and I, and then you and he,
and only I, alone.

Absence

Breathe in. Breathe out.
Peeling back layers until only the most natural functions remain,
No thoughts, no words, just body and spirit moving in rhythm,
This is how to deal with absence. With severing. With cleaving.
Grasp the back of a chair to stand taller,
White-knuckled, you grasp the walls of the well into which
you threw yourself, or someone threw you, and to not fall
you hold on to everything you pass until someone asks,
or doesn't ask, if you're even doing okay.
You answer that you're well, because,
let's face it, you have strength, you have bones
that connect and muscle that straighten your back
and eyes and a mouth with which to face the human world
and of course you have to look put together.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
This is how to deal with absence,
because there is no remedy - because the dark places
must be explored in order to find the light again,
and since breathing is something you have to do, anyway,
to survive, it's the only thing to do when your soul
aches for the presence of someone who leaves you.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
This is how to deal with absence.
There is no way to deal with absence,
except by staring it in the face
until you recognize that nothing is there,
until you can breathe again without aching.

Immortality

Like it or not, you are immortalized
In this ink, these skeletons of black and white
That won't fade when we fall old and grey,
When our own skeletons of skin fall away.
And when we're gone, people will see these words
And know you - know your beauty, your heart,
And the utter love I hold for you, here,
In these forever words that will never fade.
And to me, to love, to words, there is never any
"Too late," until we are too old or too gone to
Breathe, to speak, to write, to look.
To words, to here, and now, there is only forever,
And forever here is where I love you.
All we can do is keep breathing,
And watch this moment extend into
Infinity, while our hands, perhaps only ever
almost touching, will age and wrinkle and
crumble into the dust of the world that will
Keep reading. Always, always, they will
Keep reading.

Knowing.

We all have moments of weakness...
Those nights when you wake up, unable to breathe,
The name of someone on your lips -
Someone who isn't there, who left.
And maybe they'll never know that to you it was
Only yesterday you had them, when days and weeks
and almost months have passed. And maybe they'll
Never know that when you think of them,
you still smile like the schoolboy you were.
Or maybe they do know, and just refuse to
care how it felt for you to be thrown in front
of that moving bus - not knowing and not caring
That even were they to hurt you intentionally
You would still, if asked about them,
Be able only to gush about all their
beauty and compassion.
Perhaps they weren't ready for you.
Perhaps asking them to be ready was unfair.
Perhaps it truly was all about them, and perhaps
in the end, you didn't really matter.
But some day, you'll want to know why
you just weren't good enough,
Why they settled for less,
And why, at the end of the day,
Your heart still feels incapable of loving someone else
After all these days and weeks and months...
When their love was given away again so quickly.

If you read this, I still love you.
There's a home in my arms. And the door is
always open.

I get so tired of silence, sometimes.

Never wish ill of others.
Don't allow blackness to blemish a passionate soul.
You never know when you or someone that you love
will leave this world before goodbyes can be exchanged,
and hearts lay crippled and words are left unsaid
in the shadows of absence.

Memory and Dreams

I remember lying next to you,
my arms around you, in bed, as you shared with me
the contents of your dreams. You seemed so
afraid to bare your soul, your hopes for us,
and the future we could share together.
The feelings you described did not push me away,
(how could they? They were so beautiful),
as I held on tight, hoping that my telling you
that I liked what you had seen in those dreams,
that I liked our future described that way,
that I wasn't scared, that it was beautiful,
would be enough for you to know that I
wanted, in the deep recesses of my heart,
to take that walk with you. To walk into
that room to find you there, standing before a
mirror, ready to take your hand and assure you
of as much a future as these bones and soul
could give you. That while I faced our future
with trepidation, you were something that I wanted
and a future I could wish for.

This is how I cope, now, with time, with space,
with pain, with memory, as I sit here alone,
pulling these memories out of my cup of coffee
like a pensieve, as Proust once pulled all of Combray
out of a cup of tea - and, like Proust, I imagine
the contents of my heart to be pulled out
at length, ad infinitum,
to fill volumes and volumes and boxes and boxes
of pages with these words - words swimming around
waiting to emerge, for the right line to string them
together and pull them free,
Struggling to find the right way to arrange themselves
onto the page as they dive, scrambling, maniacal, from my pen,
attempting time and time again to show my grief
and loss to me,
and time and time again
to remind me what it meant and means
to love someone, even in the darkest hour.

For now, your dreams and hopes
still resonate with me - I can't imagine
either that you can toss them aside so lightly.
And so I'll continue to pull words out of
my cup of coffee, in endless strings
knotted together like a magician's handkerchiefs,
an entire town of words, my own Combray,
and wait until the right words strike at the right line
and spill forward into the right incantation.

Love is, after all, the greatest and most powerful
incantation - one spell I was afraid to cast.
So, now, let me cast these lines, and pull out
greater ones in the hope that one day,
you will read these lines and know, and know,
that your spells worked on me, and these memories
and dreams surrounding me, like sirens you
sent me to sing me to sleep, or to my death,
still keep me company as I become the words
I write, and in becoming words,
I become the dreams and spells you cast,
the endless give and take, the push and pull
of the cleaving of the Universe,
and find no rest until the right words are spoken,
and once more set me free to walk in dreams
of love again.