What if I'm not the hero?
Your faith, blinder than your love
Unquestioning as your loyalty
Refuses to waver
But don't you ever wonder?
Don't you doubt yourself
As I boil, burn and break
As I drag myself to the surface
Again and again, I resurface in your arms
Again and again, I pull you under
But don't you ever question?
So, so silently questioning
These motives of mine
If not yourself, would you doubt me?
Will you doubt me
Before, at last, we run out of time
I shroud myself in stolen certainty
What more could I be
Than this reflection?
Neither know, nor will we
Perhaps we will, so nightly
I pray you can see through me
"I missed your drawings"
I frown, pausing in my work. There's a lot to have missed, so much that I couldn't share with her, but I've shown her everything I've drawn while she was gone. I never stopped drawing, I'm not sure that I could.
It dawns on me that maybe she means this specific act of drawing. Me, pencil and paper, curled up in my favorite chair rather than sitting in front of my laptop. If she does, I'm not sure what it is she could possibly prefer about it. I'm out of practice, my fingers are stiff and my work is sloppy.
She is shifting on her feet and biting her lip. Realizing that she is waiting for a response, I hold the paper
Just as you enter
She looks up
Though she has been like that
Three hundred years or more
She is not mad
That you are tardy
Perhaps disappointment
Is hidden in that not-quite-smile
But she forgives you
The moment youre seen
The rustle of her dress on warm skin
The moment she sees you it begins
You freeze
Thats when her smile
Becomes without compare
As you stop and stare
A stutter on your lips
If you can speak
If you dare
What can you say
Or do but stand there weak?
This is what you deserve
She tells you with her eyes
As she pulls you deeper still
Without a breath
But with your will
She has known you
I would give my body for strength
Even now, do you see me so weak
So small and slow and helpless
I have no power, no strength of body or will
How can I help you
When Im only me?
I would give my voice to speak
My words are stolen as soon as I start
So small and frightened and hollow
Insufficient and insignificant as I try
To show you what I see
But how can I explain
When Im only me
I would destroy my mind to think
To plan and make it happen
Without fail, with brilliance
Have you here, near and mine
Or even to hold un-faded memories close
But nothing comes of the nothing
Through it all Im only me
I would s
It's not that I love to love
I realize now that I had wanted to, not wanted to,
imaged and abandoned loving,
but I had never loved before
It's not that I wanted to need
I needed, in fact, to remained in tacked
And thought that meant living alone
But now here I am, needing and wanting and needing to want
And I never hoped to keep you
Never assumed my hands were
Strong enough to keep us together
But here we are, together despite ourselves, and pulled here by fate
You know I never cared to kiss
Too messy and too fleshy, I never wished to touch
I wanted no part of that forced normalcy
But here your breath breathes words to min
Here, under too few sheets
Your eyes keeps me warm
And in that instant you love me
Can do me no harm
Please, walk through the storm
With me, hand in hand
Make me strong until I belong
Be with me and take me where I am
Look how far we've come
And where we've been
You're more than a lover
Much more, dearest friend
Safe from the winter, we'll hide from the end
Safer together, we'll never give in
The unlikely pair, you, love, and me
With time, space and sheets to begin
Pray for summers past and promise
If we break, and please be honest
That you will not just wait for me
That you will live and grow and be
If you may ask that I move on
And promise that I'll be that strong
It's logical you also plan
To move along as life demands
Oh, lover made of brightest dawn
It's in your arms that I belong
Not sketching out far off doomsday
Or plotting points in my decay
If you are gone, I want no other
My one, my only lovely lover
We can't be forever
You yourself made that clear
From the very first day
When you warned what I feared
I'm not your escape
Your content one-way street
With no needy heart
And no tired feet
But I tried so hard
To hold us together
And thought I knew how
To never say never
I can't call you cute
You say that word is to precious
Then demand that I stay
With tender flourishes
But I'm not your 'honey'
I was never that sweet
And just further embittered
By my latest defeat
I'm not your fault
I chose to believe
That despite all your protest
You would never leave.
I wanted so blindly
To just make you stay
And simply to beg you