Together

Together

There you with your stilted smile,

I was waiting to hold you close

to put an end your bootcamp order of business.

I see you wave with your beautiful hands.

Can you feel my need to feel your heart

beyond our stone’s throw?

You, with your pressed uniform.

I was waiting to make a mess of you

If not just to erase your hurt.

You are my orchid’s fit

I wanted your face,

to be nothing short of vivid.

There you are. . .hands on my face.

I was dying to share my seasons with you

and wander off into our sacred space.

You finally say my name

I know you want to know me again

I'm up for the challenge if you are.

Do the evening stars light you up

like what they used to?

Can you still see my face

in those still waters?

Do the city lights

still rush into you the same celestial noise?

Do the ocean waves

still crash into your heart the same way?

Because all I see

is the stoned glaze of your tears.

Do our life’s meadows still

chase you into our dream?

‘Till death do us part

with a baby silhouette?

Do you see her with

the same conviction?

Her amber eyes

beg you to latch

onto her through the life’s maze.

Will you still

stroke the whisps of

my hair when it turns gray?

With nothing left to be said

but the solaced smiles

that say it all.

Do you still see that life

as you cry in the night

for the one that left you?

His casket was earth defying.

With gardenias overlaying

the beautifully crescent arc

of his new wooden home.

Your brother of war was not a complex person.

His happiness to him meant

never needing a reason to weep

over living like

you and me.

But your night screams

burst the bubble

of our level headed fantasy.

Did you see that line of fire

when you aimed for it?

Or do I list it on the

charter of things

to chuck away

for our garage sale?

You are not that man

who’s fist aims

for the flesh

that contains it.

Of course I accept your apology.

How else could I

bear to fix on your mindful gaze again?

My only homestead

was needing to hasten my dried up heart

with the nearness of you finally in tow.

But the extinguished light in our eyes

will take time to reach the same flicker

in the same way that our dinner candle

flirts with our lovely morning embrace.

I

want to be THAT woman,

who can enjoin one dream

to another with the flourish

of her eye.

I want to be here with you

to ride the shedding of old skins

and find our way together in flight

to the discovery of our new place.

Your guitar haunts me,

mounted on that wall,

untouched by your

nimble hands.

I could retrieve it,

We could derelict it,

violate it’s duty

even though it waited patiently for you.

We can string our own songs,

of loathing the war,

that cut us in two

from the better nature

of ourselves.

But mostly,

we can gaze at its beauty,

and talk about how it cannot be nearly stunning enough

without it reflecting you.

Who do you sing to at night,

when blood wrings through your hands,

with the ripple

tide of someone else’s wing?

I can only sift through,

nightmare after nightmare.

with your stilted quiet

recount the daily routine

of latrine duty and stale pork chops.

I can only wait,

to see the restlessness in your eyes,

for a heart that is softer

than the ones that

breed you for death.

Our sky looked like our crest tonight

with a stealthy shine

through our golden cherries and wine.

Your voice veers through

my fingers as I linger

over the melody ivories of our concert grand.

I feel your breath through the

syncopation of my pendulum heart

between missing you and

boasting the break of being on my own.

Today your favorite ice cream

ran out

at the corner store,

so I reached over for mine instead.

The life we are beginning

to share

wedges itself into a

separation that leaves me unto myself.

At the harvest, I picked apples with a brighter

shade of red than

the passion of our dust.

My blind devotion to a trickling feeling

that haunts the light of your tortured sky.

As you smile through the “fight”,

do I ask you if you're all right

or do I save it for church?

Just let me lie with you.

I want to live on your

side of our world.

To me you are nothing but gold.

It's a layered remembrance of a cradle stock life,

sans the echo of the timely brigade

designed to shake off the deafening tribunal

that tells us what we should and shouldn’t hold on to.

And as the fading ember of recollection burns out for good

we see, we feel, we know

what’s rightfully ours and what’s wrongfully theirs.

A wind of regret tethered to the ground rallies around the baby dolls

until a heart, a mind or a soul could be seen.

She used to be a star light’s fan

Not ours to see, not ours to care.

But we hold on to her with a somber glare.

Looking to the skyline to tell us how to live right

Too big to know

Just another number headed for the slumber

of ghosts again, too old to grow

Here’s to a new song. . .

A hand on the heart

means no more false starts.