Another Time, Another World

To the other part of my soul. The person I sometimes forget I am. The person I didn't know I could be.

A place in my mind where other worlds overlap with here and we were immortal, outside place and time.

Our dance of madness and passion that drove us to extremes. Joy and sorrow as we had never known before and only understood, all too well, after the fact.

Shadows and light, demons and angels, ice and fire. Our love was a tumult that soared us both to the heavens and shook us to our cores, leaving us forever marked by the sonata we shared.

These burning embers we carry in our hearts, flickers of another world, another life. Flickers in our memory of what almost was, yet could never be. The difference between destiny and fate; of where we are and what our souls yearn to be.

In our time together we carved out this romance and tragedy that will be etched in our souls anon.

And in the journal of my soul will ever be the book mark to your chapter, to our story, in my heart til the end.

Onyx Eyes

You were a ghost

A spectre upon the air

Wandering shade within my dreams

Blurred the lines between waking

and my imagining

Finger tips and trembling lips

Eyes that peered into my soul

There was a tenderness

A purity that I felt

Unworthy to touch.

But you pulled me close

And drew me into your world

In your eyes I saw what poets dream of

In your hands you held my trembling soul

As I shuddered against you in release of my

fear and longing

In relief of the loneliness in my heart

Yet like a dissipating fog

You were gone with the changing breeze

And in the gloaming, morning light I am left to wonder

Did I imagine you?

Did I conjure who I thought you were?

Did we briefly share a dream just for me to awake alone?

Curtain Calls

They say that timing is everything. And here we are. Everything feels right but the time. You’re not mine. You can’t be. Save for those precious moments before that door opens and you have to leave. I lay back and my hopes dissipate against the ceiling like the cigarette smoke escaping my lips.

 Sometimes even as I hold you I feel the moments slip away until we put on our friendly masks and play our daily roles. Roles we cast off in passion and tenderness; behind shades and scrims; curtains and closed doors. Where you fall into me and I fall into a field of down that feels like home. Like your skin against mine. Like looking in your eyes and knowing you believe in me.

 And I just want to hold you a moment longer, trail my fingers along your back. Feel your cheek against mine. Tangle our limbs and fall asleep until we lose where you end and I begin.

But we can’t stay in this green room forever. Eventually, every time, we must take the stage again, and play these roles we’ve chosen. And we glance across the room with the vague imaginings of another play upon this stage. Different costumes, different steps, different masks, but your hand in mine in the final act.

Cricket

I love Christmas. I start planning Christmas in the summer. It’s a holiday full of joy, wonder and companionship to me. For all of the souls I share it with and all of the fond memories I have of it, there are traces that will ever remind me of you.

Holding you on the couch as we watched the snow fall. Opening presents with your family. Waking up to breakfast, your framed eggs. Me trying and failing to make breakfast for you, and you trying my cheese covered egg globs anyway.

My shoulder wet with tears at the thoughts of your departed father.

I still remember my brother’s wedding. I smiled as they announced the father/daughter dance. I admired the sweetness of fathers taking their little girls of all ages onto the dance floor. I watched as my new sister in law danced with her father.

Then I remembered. I turned to see your eyes brim with tears. Wordless, I took your hand and we walked to the parking lot. You emptied your tears upon me as I held your shaking body. You apologized for taking me away from the reception. Your thoughtfulness was boundless, even at your worst.

I told you there was nowhere else I would rather be, and that was the truth. It still is.

Had I only known how dear this all was. But I did not yet understand the face of the demon called Depression and of all it cost me, you were the steepest price. Countless times I would have traded the life I gained on the other side to have you back again.

My friends back there tell me how they wish they could have my life. And backstage, on tour, on set; I dream of a simple life in a small town with you.

You’re having a child now. A child you told me you never wanted. With a new husband I wish was me. How things change…

In the still of night it’s the little things. Your presence next to me, your tender sleeping visage, and the way you would rub your feet together to fall asleep. Like a beautiful cricket.

And the night song returns the lump in my throat. I swallow hard all the regret that’s brought me here without you. Their serenade echoing in the starlight, a requiem for another life I might have lived.

Hyde

Sometimes flames can burn too bright.

And singe us both with its wicked dance.

My Sonata in the Moonlight. Byron's poems brought to life. Such mystery in your eyes, such desperation in your love. Like moments were forever fleeting and we might never make love again one day. Your tears upon my shoulder, of passion, of sadness you could not explain; of that endless understanding that today's splendour would one day be gone.

And it so overwhelmed you that you mourned that eventuality even in the moment of joy. Your turbulent song of joy and sorrow. A ballad we would sing together as you taught me its melody. But we never found harmony...

Our yearning ballad; ever waxing, ever waning. Like the moonlight that bathed our bodies.

As the nights quickly ticked away. There was wisdom in your prophecy. For all must wane and fade away. So too did we.

Burning passion, clinging desperately against inevitable tomorrow. Where our love is but a history, dancing in and out of the flickering projector reel in our minds.

I could not heal the darkness in your soul or ease your suffering. I could not help you find a calm in the storm. And eventually you no longer let me try.

I remember you vanishing. A ghost in the wind. Me holding the fading embers in my shaking hands.

Me writing letters to shadows that would never reply. Left with only a picture and a half burnt candle to remind you were here once. A weeping angel that did not take me with you.

Wake

Waking to the rain beading outside the window, a bleeding ghost against the mist of dreams. I exhale upon the pane.

The pain.

Tear drops fall staccato upon this canvas of blurring lines I can no longer see. But I keep pressing pen to page in crimson ink because I cannot exorcise the way you still haunt me.

The dissonant wind chime breathes your parting whispers and every secret I’ll never know. Buried in those deep blue eyes, six feet underground.

My sobs choke as I place my hands upon this Earth that you’ve departed.

I awake, shaking and cold, every tear a silent prayer that you’ve awoken somewhere better than here. Than this place that hurt you and drove you away.

And the slow motion image of disjointed dream I where I see the flash before you departed and lament that you were all alone in the end and that I didn’t even know. 

I missed your wake. Please don't let this be awake...

I go to this place to grieve and beg forgiveness for leaving you alone. Because I don’t know where you’re buried. I didn’t even know you were gone.

Suspicious glances when I asked for you. Some sadistic joke? Or does he really not know? The bottom falling out of my chest as the tale unfolded before me. They didn’t know where you rested either, only that you were gone.

Left in the wake of sinking confusion and endless questions that will never be answered. And guilt that pulls with hooks from the bottom of my heart.

And the fraying projector reel plays on loop. The fractured images of you here, not here, leaving, gone. 

And I wake.

These Spinning Wheels

I fall into your eyes

Seeing another world
Of all that’s yet to be

The glimmer of the fae

The mischief in your smile

Like the warmth and light of shining day

When I’m with you a while

Your touch, this warmth to my heart

Your hug, a balm unto my soul

Your passing, an aching within to start

Next to you, finally feeling whole

But we met at two wrong turns

Opposite spins on the carousel

You’re constantly passing me by

And I have to keep watching you go

It hurts so bad, I want to cry

I’m so afraid to let you know

For I’d rather have your light at all

Then lose it all for wanting more

The phantoms of your passing haunt me

But I know I have to accept the score

Its never going to be the right time

Hands rotating from left to right

And back again, threads of fate intertwine

The echoes of your face, inside my mind

Left shaking in your waning light

I Miss You

I miss you.

So much meaning in those three small words.

As though they could convey the distance between where I am

and where I was.

That space between who we are and who we were.

Every moment I see a gift, or want to send a message about a special moment.

I stop mid stride, and the world grows quiet. Because that simply isn't who we are anymore.

At least not to each other.

As though such things are ever simple.

I tell our neighbor as I pack my things that I don't know how to deal well with this sort of thing.

He laughs and says “Son, none of us do.”

And the narrative of this expanding gulf etches into my mind. It seems like yesterday, and forever ago, that I could come to you with my hopes and my worries. And you would come to me with yours. And we were each other's warmth against a cold and indifferent world.

But now I close the trunk, and look at the stairs I used to climb to what used to be our home.

Only that's not where those stairs lead anymore.

I sigh. There's no use in crying. Although the ache inside me can't tell the difference.

I get in the car and pull away, wondering if you ever think of me too. But I don't think you do. It's better off that I think this anyway. Hope is maddening at times like this...

Arpeggio

              

               There are moments in life where there are no right answers.  Arpeggio changes in the music when we make up the dance steps as we go, but neither of us know where we’re going. Allegramente, our unsteady symphony that expands and contracts, ebbs and flows, but the lingering notes that haunt the air remain. Untouched. Allentando. Unfulfilled.

               

               Your crooked smile and cat eyes made you a thing of wonder to me. Something fey, something otherworldy. The way your eyes would dance when we were together made time stand still. Fermata. The way you would look at me like there was nothing else in the world. And in those moments I believed you.

              

                But either our time was too short or life changed too quickly; allegrezza amoroso a andante. In time we each found ourselves in the arms of other lovers. But a message, a whisper, a glance, and both of us would know that the notes of our song had not faded.

              

                Allegro. A crescendo would crash as we came together. And I would find myself transported to another place. A place of sound, and touch and emotion that pull through my soul like the sun’s warmth and alight my mind with its radiance.

              

               Then the day after I would stare out the window at a snowy, grey landscape and my eerie world would be quiet and calm once more.

             

                 I look back over the paths our feet have walked together; hand in hand. I remember those slight caresses amidst the bitter cold. But neither of us noticed. We had our spirit to keep us warm.

              

                I still walk these paths alone and smile. Remembering. Wondering… listening to those notes falling with the rain drops in the air. Dolce. Dolente. Diminuendo.

Tezave

               There’s a certain numbness that sets in with age. It’s unfortunate and we don’t often like to talk about it; but it does happen. It’s  a distancing from feeling things too keenly. As children, we’re still learning to connect with those emotions as we enjoy all the wonder of discovery. As adolescents and teens we fight to understand these feelings as we have our first encounters with love.

              
              There is such naiveté in those years, but such combustion in their hearts of the young as well. I find myself missing those times. Those times when it was socially acceptable to feel that deeply, to love that much. To make another person your everything. Staying up late just talking on the phone. Writing notes just because you’re thinking about that person. I thought all of that gone forever.

                And then I met you.

            
                I didn’t believe you at first. I thought there was some trick to it. Some game, some angle. I hadn’t realized that I’d become that jaded and cynical. But I had. I held you at arm’s length because I wasn’t sure I could believe in you. It was like finding out magic was real, but not being prepared to believe.

            
               And now that magic is gone. Maybe it couldn’t have lasted. I don’t know. I feel like I’ve squandered eternity. I try my best to rationalize as I feel like I’m suffocating. I can’t breathe because all I want to do is scream your name and hope that you’ll hear me in some distant echo and remember what kindled our fire in the first place.

           
              But I can’t go back, and I can’t move forward holding this shattered spirit. So I cast the pieces to the wind and hope that one might find you and bring a smile to your face. And I continue on, hoping that the gods grant me that fire once again.