Loud planes burrow thick white lines into the sky.
Birds pierce the silence, looking for a partner-in-crime.
People with briefcases barely nod as they run away to
Somewhere Very Important.

I sit by a dingy window,
so very way up high,
and wonder -
just when did all this Time pass me by?

it won’t last…
it’s jarringly reminiscent of a patterned past.

Now,
drifting with the current,
they’ll travel together -
telling stories about the stars,
sharing silences and battle scars.

Then, soon enough,
(when Time and Fate decide to play)
their memories will fade
and they

will float

away.

We felt destined to meet,
to fall -
faster and faster
spinning out of control
into that moment
in the bitter cold of December
embracing as the wind whipped the  flag in the distance,
the clang of the flagpole serenaded a strange moment in Time
and we swore that Something happened in that pause-

Something that meant everything or nothing
or anything….

Why didn’t we stop to wonder about the pause?
The hesitation spoke volumes in our eyes wide with silence.

I think Life flashes before your eyes
not only before death,
but in those moments
where reality and dreaming blend into soft Monet patterns.
A place between asleep and wide awake.
A place of limitless possibilities.
A place usually left untapped
in the drone of our day to day lives.

It was passion and hope,
it was two lost souls desperate for a change in fortune,
and in the end,
it was futile wishing -
sand sliding inescapably through grasping fingertips
that proved intention was merely half the battle.

As you said,
time and time again,
actions speak louder than words
and I did listen,
even when I looked out the window,

drowning a million miles away.

We learned,
you can not save a drowning man
refusing to relinquish his dead weight,
and you can not combine two souls
carrying the burdens of a lifetime gone wrong.

Freed of my blinders,
unfettered by once familiar brakes
anxiously feeling for the ground,
I’m skywriting without a net.
New words scribbled spontaneously
all about me for once
and nothing about you.

Woke up one morning
oddly light and calm.
Bathed in slashes of warm sun beams,
dark hair splayed out across my white pillow-

I was still.
Content. Breathing.
Dreaming.

Then. Ever so slowly.
Something was different.

Cautious, unsettled, searching,
I rose and dressed,
until,
it finally came-

Piercing revelations,
the clearest pale blue sky,
without the wisp of a single cloud,
I was free!

A symphony of clarity-
this epiphany long awaited-
a year-long cloudy day lifted
to reveal a gorgeous sunrise,
filled with the promise of young dreams reborn.

Letting go the throttle,
breathing a sigh of relief,
I can drift into the unknown now
without needing you.

Settling on full disclosure,
haltingly,
I explained.

The song on the radio unpleasantly reminded me
that I am still bruised, still quietly wounded.
While absently acknowledging its country melody,
I remembered all that I would do better to forget.

My confession gathered force,
a tropical storm just brewing.
I told her how my heart deeply longed
-if only just tonight-
to come home,
slip into welcoming, waiting arms,
and say quietly, heavily -

“Baby, I just had a bad day.”

To cry out and rail against life’s frustrations,
safe in the shelter
of my someone’s embrace,
tears absorbing into that stalwart chest.

To curl up content and
soothed by the sound of a familiar, well-loved heartbeat.

I exhaled-
- and she listened.

I choked out my anger,
whispered my deep resentment,
that this was all absent
without my consent, without my okay.

Once loosed,
my words were a relentless hurricane.
A rushing flood of useless memories and questions tumbling over and over one another.

I was tired!
Tired of wondering,
of hurting,
exhausted by being so absolutely let down,
so tired of paying the consequences of misplaced trust.

In a laugh
soaked in painful memories,
I whispered to her.
“I just had a bad day.”

My ragged breathing slowed.

And after a time,
we talked of other things.

Waking up every morning,
to the sun’s intrusion,
blindly aching for all the tiny moments
that made us, us -
was akin to dying from a gut shot wound.

my resentment grew.

Rather than fading away
to become nothing more
than gauzy remnants of a waking nightmare,
you stayed around to haunt me.

Cruel and carefully placed words
designed to linger on after you were gone,
danced sharp knives through the air around me,
shimmering caustically, like copper.

Worse still, words meant to invoke loyalty
whispers of forever, eternity -
words from the heart
stab me further, deeper.

Broken promises are passe,
broken hearts are cliche,
It’s an old story yet so new to me.
The walls I built so early on
protected me – until now.

Hesitant on a precipice,
feet laden with decision,
forgiving you is the step I’ve yet to take.

The enormity of missing is a black pit tonight
full of forbidden thoughts and wishes
dreams of such a life no longer on any horizon.

The If, But, Why, If Only’s are plaguing me,
stubbornly shrieking,
“I was WRONGED!”

I sigh and shrug.

What can I tell them?

Life is hard.

Life isn’t fair.

Inadequacy fills me now,
as it has all those who’ve come before-
hands full of explanations,
explanations full of empty words and hot air.

Life is pratfalls and pitfalls,
sometimes devastating periods,
marred by moments of beauty.

Is it what you make of it?
Or just a chaotic mess, without rhyme or reason?

Sleep, a welcome break from here,
awaits me with no answers-
but a promise of forgetting.

New dawn brings new hope.

Maybe therein  lies the secret, If Only.

Kept my eyes averted from them,
my spirit subdued like a woman in a burka.
yet you still stood bristling guard…
like a snarling lion protecting his kill.

Walked giggling down Crystal Lake Avenue
with “our” girl chattering happily at me
-a baby monkey on my hips-
She learned about caterpillars and butterflies from me.

Ran away from you
down Crystal Lake Avenue.
Everyone else was safe, asleep in their beds
When you finally caught up with me…

Met your eyes across every room
Walked in sync,
To the synchronized beats
Of our different drummers.

Pieces of my shattered cell phone between us-
Breathing hard, like boxers squaring off,
we stood warily in our respective corners,
waiting to see who would be responsible for round 10.

Fell asleep like a child
To the sound of your
Rhythmic breathing, low growling voice
and heavy arm

You blocked my retreat with
broken promises and very real threats.

Backed into a corner
I trembled with silent rage
forced to watch the bottom fall out
of the fantasy we’d created.

running after her
she calls out something
I can’t hear

Playing chess outside our Starbucks
I leaned heavily into the board,
pursed lips obscured by a clenched hand
enveloped in the worn out sleeve of your old shirt.

Concentrating so hard,
eyes intent on twenty moves ahead to nowhere,
I sang Stevie Wonder softly,
“Do I do, what you do”.
Barely more than a whisper,
as always, the absentminded professor
unaware of any audience…
yet.

No matter.
You were concentrating just as deeply
on something else,
I was no competition for you.

You paused to appreciate a moment in time -
eyes passionately lingering, caressing,
devouring…

I was innocent
until your thoughts reached me.
I looked up, startled,
directly into your intensely dark brown eyes.
Trapped by the depth,
the breadth! of that searing gaze,
I felt again the way I never felt
(will never again)
but in your presence.

I stammered, I smiled,
I blushed, I beamed
Your thoughts could’ve been spoken aloud,
they came across so crystal clear.

Game forgotten,
looking down,
heart spinning out of control,
breath catching in my chest,
the world paused.

Then tentatively, teasingly,
oh so trustingly up through long twilight lashes-
my eyes adored you back.

These memories haunt me.