The weight of your absence
Is the warm soil
Over the grave of a memory
And I wonder
Were you always hidden
Among the unsaid poems
Kept safe within me?
I’ve forgotten the art of a kiss
Felt in the soft flesh
Of another’s lips
Awake and each alone at night,
We loved the other from afar
Our eyes brimming
With the same sea of stars
I’m swaying, standing here
Before a heavy wooden door
Fire light slowly pulses within
Still, with its heat, I shudder
Haunted by the burning doubt
That you live here anymore
In the limbo of remembrance, I feel
Your ear pressed against my chest
Listening for any sign of love
As if a muted heart could tell
Too deep, too far, too silent,
You just drift off to sleep
On the ocean’s echo in a shell
I’ve spent a lifetime, building ships
Just to scuttle them
In their sacred slips
I’ve this last fair curve left,
Made for a seaworthy love
Let’s leave this port at dawn
We’ve been moored here long enough.
I’d written an epilogue for this poem, but then decided to leave it open for you, anon. For the true mariner knows that love is not the ship’s sail… ~it’s the wind ~.
I sure hope this person finds you again, Poet.