Hope danced on lips unhinged by love
And the conversation was natural, intimate and real.
Truth exploded from my mouth like unrestrained combustion,
Time followed it with fleet feet in the single direction it runs.
I might never be yours
be someone
live well enough
But I am always the truth.
Your unsteady steps on
The surest of floors
And you were never certain or
Balanced.
Layers of makeup used to mask
The heavy doubt wrought by social judgment
And disguise the years lived.
The disguises fell apart in the face of
my megaphone self
Leaving us both vulnerable but wanting.
We sit frozen in time
– An impasse of a higher order –
And await the final, frail decision.
Twelve rounds,
Overtime,
For nothing.
A fire fed and
Still
Hungry.
Desire sitting,
A caged bird.
It broke,
It’s rotten
Or it died.
The words don’t come,
At least not like they used to.
All that is left are the hollow,
Scattered fragments of language
No longer forming sentences.
Writing was easy and safe and something,
But now sits rejected and empty for me.
It is either the absence of love or the echoes of all the pain,
But something about my words is no longer right or just.
Your sharp face pierced the age of beauty
and left thorns and barbs throughout my heart,
your tight, little body had fought its way into my life
and you were all I could see or feel or breathe.
It should not have been,
but it was.
Our guards came down early,
and we both got stung for a few shots early,
but we both loved the pain in every way.
There was a something about you,
some tangible, thick quality of having lived,
having been through pain and hatred,
and love,
somehow you opened your heart again.
An armistice smile played on your lips,
both of us afraid to give any more pieces of heart,
but longing to feel wanted, attractive and true.
The tentative smile became real
and was a landmark of a tiny, gorgeous mouth
always revealing your heart,
and it was never more true than at the end.
The smile danced and faded to be replaced,
for the first time,
by a frown that began to smother my heart.
I held you as you bled
and inside that perfect body
a broken heart cried.
It was not the normla sadness of love lost,
but the sadness of someone too young
taken away from life too early,
it never breathed a full life and we were worse off for that.
It should not have been and was
and now may never be again,
leaving unasked questions never to be asked
and a love never to be explored.
We almost lost ourselves in the goodbye,
bodies hurt by a heart beating out poison
in a time where breathing became everything.
I sat in bed, curled up into myself
staring at a white panel wall,
you sat up and held me from behind,
iny arms and hands wrapping around me
with a strength none would imagine,
and one meeting of eyes told everything.
I didn't want you to go then,
I don't want you to be gone.
Seconds scrub our life away like
waves scraping down the coast
or rain dragging away the earth.
We watched time eat our clasped hands,
falling away one fragment of skin after another
and never said a word about it.
We felt the approaching wall coming
but could not seem to put it into words;
the beauty of an ageless love had become
the tragedy of the leaves,
aged, dying and passionless.
White walls were
are
always ruined by dirty finger prints
and
the bleach scrubdowns never made
any difference.
There’s a filthiness to living that no one
ever talks about or
mentions
we all just watch the slow decay of the fragile
innocence.
Fear had its claws pushed through the skin
that coiled tightly around my veins and muscle,
a failed attempt to turn me away or bleed me out.
I was not dying anytime soon and the only thing
scarier than love was a lack of progress towards it.
The fear hung on like bats waiting for night to fall,
but I was the only falling piece on the board.
Dark on dark and
Eyes couldn’t find a hole to crawl into
But something stirred in you and I
Rooms apart
Never to be satisfied.
Forever is a long time,
The longest yet but we never gave up
As we crawled
Leaped
Swam and
Cried for more.
Believe in me,
Trust in these arms
Weak with failure and history.
Was there something more than this?
Is there now?
I’m lost, I said, though I knew she was sleeping.
I remained in the bed, sitting,
staring where love once was,
now some dark shape that could have been a corpse in the bed remained.
All that was special and magical in life
had suddenly become commonplace and tired;
there was no remedy or break from it.
It seemed as if the gold paint had flaked off
and now I was left staring at a mud statue.
Life was crawling by and all I wanted was to run,
and I waited so long to get out of the gates.
I wish I never looked back.
Andy Veilleux 