THE POET

THE POET

The poet lived inside a room,
Where daylight never stayed,
She wrote herself a lover,
From words the darkness made.

She gave him eyes of Sunday,
And hair of midnight rain,
She made his smile from summer,
Then whispered him a name.

He stepped outside the paper,
And bowed beside her chair,
She touched his face to make quite sure,
A living man stood there.

“My name?” he asked her softly,
She answered him, “Forever,”
He smiled and kissed her lonely hand,
As if they’d lived together.

But when she laid her weary head,
Against his silent chest,
No heartbeat moved beneath his shirt,
No breath disturbed his breast.

The poet searched her pages,
Then cried at what she’d done,
She’d written every part of him,
But missed the vital one.

She searched inside her dictionary,
But love had disappeared,
The word had slipped between the lines,
And hidden out of fear.

She tore it from her final poem,
And pushed it in his chest,
His heart began to beat at once,
But hers began to rest.

With every beat he came alive,
With every breath she blurred,
Until the man was flesh and bone,
And she became a word.

By dawn he stood a living man,
She faded into rhyme,
He folded up the page she was,
And loved her past all time.