A POEM

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Sitting beside you forms a beautiful agony.

The things I want to ask,

The words I want to speak, but don’t,

In fear of losing you again,

In fear of speaking out of line.

I know it’s sunnier for you - all of this.

You cloud the way you see me,

Fog how you acted,

How you hurt me,

How you took something I love away from me.

I think it’s true that I was in love.

In love with being close to you,

Feeling the sun’s heat from your skin,

Focusing to remember the placement of your tattoos,

Following your fingers drag through your hair before putting on your hat,

Flicking up the hairs at the nape of your neck.

There is a fever of feeling towards you,

That I can’t break.

I hear and watch as your lips form every word,

I look for what shells I will walk around,

So that I can keep you next to me for as long as I can,

You know I’ve never liked goodbyes.

Especially when it comes to you.

Do you hear what I’m not saying when you look into my eyes?

Do you see what I’m looking for when you look at my lips?

What else can I do, but tell you I’ve missed you?

What else will you do, but ignore and avoid me?

My outcome doesn’t change whether I’m calm or angry.

Your answer doesn’t change whether you’re honest or hiding.

We’re in your world,

In your decision.

In your bed,

The television illuminates the water droplets on your back,

The white towel wraps around your hips and curtains you.

You know what you’re doing,

I know what I’m doing,

It’s like we can’t become one sooner.

By the sea,

I hover over you, dipping and swirling my fingertip on your skin.

“That’s a B.”

You’re so bad at this game,

But I’m worse.

I can’t not tell you what I’m thinking, or feeling.

The words roll off my tongue,

And I wait for you to flinch,

And I wait for you to move.

Even though you don’t flinch,

Even though you don’t move.

At the courtyard,

The yellow made me glow in a crowd of cement and people from the past.

We left together,

We walked together,

We ate together,

We slept together - not like that.

Side by side,

The jolt of your body awakens the pulse in my wrists while I hold you.

This pulse I beat for you,

This pulse I protect you from.

Through this silence,

We meet over and over again, but not in person.

We meet in everything you and I loved.

The songs I drive longer to finish,

The boats lined up across the rocks.

I see us there, on the cliff,

My legs dangling off while you paint and knead sunscreen into my back.

I turn away from the memory, and yearn

In the nature we spent sitting in,

In the moments that became jokes of our own,

Some that I can’t laugh at anymore without wanting to cry.

I had some of the best days with you,

For you to just leave them.

Holding on for “soon”,

Holding on for “better”.

Hidden under my sunglasses, tears betray me,

And I swipe them away,

With the same hand that held yours;

That swapped my glasses to your face,

That shuffled the deck to play,

That tugged at the string of your shorts,

That traced the salt from your cheeks.

Listening with you leaves me bare.

There isn’t a silence that makes me feel more foolish,

There isn’t a question I ask more than why I can’t let it go.

So many words left unsaid,

So many things I try to ask,

With fear of being reprimanded,

With fear of you looking away.

I stop myself; embarrassed.

Do you enjoy this?

Seeing me come undone?

Seeing this unbinding knot to be pulled loose only on my end?

I try to want to sit there in silence,

I try not to remember what was, this endless rumination.

Planes fly above us, and you speak of January and February,

Where you’ll be,

Where I’ll be. 

There’s a pain that lands in waiting for what memory can’t bring back.

“Did you think I’d like it when you were there?” / “I’m thinking you’d like it now.”

It’s not the same, I realised, how we see each other.

I thought my yearning spoke to you,

That if I looked at you long enough, you’d recognise your own.

We carry loss at different weights.

You turn from me and I wonder,

How much you have to blur to leave.

END