Absence

Seized by nightmares
My hand reaches to feel the assurance of your beating heart
But finds none
For a hundredth night
I lie beside a crease less left
Wrapped in despair and longing
And I wake up to another nightmare
Of having to breathe in your absence

Some yesterdays haunt my corridors

Some yesterdays have said farewell

Some yesterdays had blessed my coldness away

Some yesterdays chase me to hell

Your laughter echoes in my hollow insides

Your words are scattered all over the place
Its a strange grieving quiet in this house
Like a shore abandoned by the sea

Doors still wait unopened

Rains ask for you
Your poems bleed every night
In my sweaty palms

Your guitar has refused to sing

It does not like my tune

The birds don't come home now

Even when worried by June

The drawers are filled with you

And I stand here, looking at them
Like a shipwreck
In the solace of oblivion.

Clothes smell of your smiles

Walls chose to be bare

 I never look at them

For the fear of their stinging stare

I lie back into the void
When the chimes sing with the wind
The curtains dance
And blinded by warm, salty sorrow
I call out for you

I can feel you touch my lonely breath
I can feel you kiss my bruises away
I can feel you the warmth of this quilt
In the pillow cradling my head
On the sheets

And gently on my lips
You place back the pieces of a smile
"You are here", I whisper, "with me"

The silence whispers back
"Always"

THE SONG

I wish I did not belong to you.

I would sit on the shores that you dreamt of.

Let the waves embrace my longing feet

And kiss these hands…

Walk across leaving footprints behind

Only to be washed by eager waters

But your memories will never be washed away…

In an unfinished poem, in a book unread

I have found love in your promise unkept.

I would lie on the sands in the morning sun’s warmth

And breathe the happiness of solitude

I would meet that part of me that still

Does not answer the call to my name

For they would bring me closer to the soul

The soul to which you now belong

For I once belonged to you

In an unfinished poem, in a book unread

I have felt your touch, in your promise unkept

I would walk in these woods

Filled with emptiness

Sit under the care of our elderly oak

Listen to the song of a parted lark

And remember you singing to me

For your voice sings no more

And I still belong to you

You breathe in my air, you rush through my veins

You smile in my soul

In an unfinished poem, in a book unread

I have found myself in the promise you kept…