when I met you

I knew

that if you weren't

my person

the soul I've been

wandering toward

then

I didn't actually have one

and I am in fact truly

all alone

in eternity

now I’ve become certain:

there is

no one

in my eternal trajectory

waiting to meet my wavelength

precisely so

And yet

there is not a single soul

I'd rather waste

the remaining balance

of my days on

than

You

I dreamt you pulled me down

to rest my head upon yours

we talked of trivial nothings

the comfort of that familiarity

becomes even greater

when I am finally

in your arms

everytime I sought to pull away

you returned me close again

there was no sense of entrapment

only of being cloistered in your tenderness

against the spinning madness

of the world

skin to skin

we tell each other everything

never revealed to anyone else

I dreamt

you were making love to

someone else

this image chisels away

fragments of my soul

even as I have no right

in the surfeit of my longing

to enmesh the totality

of my being

within yours

all these yearnings

forfeit

as the desire

seems

to only belong

to me

I would never

force your hand

never violate

your will

if I cannot

beguile you

to my side

I don't

deserve you

but yet

if I could be granted

one mere askance:

please do not love another

so blatantly in my stead

before me

ebony corvid blade

slices decisively

the nebulous effluvium

of daybreak

settling at my feet

a gift

a showing of my favor

amongst tricksters

If you can get through my walls, it will be a miracle.

I want to have you speak the word, "love" first, because each time I have spoken first; it was the deathknell of that connection.

Infatuation is for beginnings; I'm far more interested in hearing where you think our journey can go, if we plan it out right.

I will trust you to go about your days without seeking constant validation; but I will welcome you with open arms as we seek solace at the end of the mundane, seeing the fantastical in your soul through your eyes, as we commune over our evening rituals. The ones that we make.

I will love all the ugly parts, the don't-fit parts; the shadow-pieces that wreak havoc, since no friend or family would listen to them as you grew. I expect the same from you. I will lovingly listen to those pieces, but tell them firmly that they may not cross the boundary of harm. I expect the same from you.

No one escaped childhood wholly unscathed.

I want you to challenge me; but by keeping me from getting too set on my ways. I want you to tell me things I've never heard of. I want you to beg me to travel with you, to make it possible. I want you to show me how to love open all the ugly things in the world. I have my luggage; but I'll help you drag yours, too, within reason.

I want you to keen with my mournings, even as you nudge me to put them down. I want to give you the same. I want to banter and bloviate and bicker and babble blathering buffoonery, and have you call all my bluffs; since we're only playing games in the first place.

I want the most awful puns you can think of. I want laughter. I'll see what I can do about tit for tatt.

I want you to seek the unasked questions with me. Take me with you so we can create new constellations, far away from cities. Remember with me, the dreams that aren't really dreams.

We cannot be everything to each other; it's best we don't even try. But the entity that is born between us shall have given unto it as many breaths as we can possibly share to give it life.

I want you to know that when we break, we can choose to rearrange the pieces and line them with platinum. We'll be something new again; even as we age and fall apart. If we're still together when our bodies no longer churn out hormones, I will still treasure the comfort of your closeness as I lay with you and stroke your face and head with my fingertips and lips; in memory of all the other places they have been with you.

If we cannot become this?

Don't beg for entry. Do not come rapping-tapping on my chamber doors. My fortress is here to guard me well.

It will be a miracle if you surpass all the gates.

Yet: I am waiting for you; are you seeking me?

I stopped searching; but I still watch for your passage. I am listening.

Say something.

harmony not stilled

but shattered

sudden gaspful wakening

catapulted into awareness

in daybreak 

love unbegotten 

become unmade

closing eyes against

molten rivulet cheeks and lips

willing vergessen

having counted many leaves

in the progressing tome

of my life

I ponder as as stare

at the newness of this page

onto which I've strayed

encompassing fullness and possibility

while vitality ebbs away

this is an intrepid sort of heartbreak

for I have decades since learnt

embracing the coexistence of yearning

this is not the heart split wide

to enable room for growing inclusions

this is not nostalgia for youthful chances betrayed

this is not the regret of words left unsaid

this is not the remorse of violent speech hurled into an atomic fission of souls

this: a slow seeping of quintessence

that distills

out of the fibre of my perpetuum

wicking away

as droplets of eternity

along with the aftertaste of

your reminiscence

departing strands of shadow

displaced, forfeit

to the other side of the veil

irretrievable until this body passes

until I find you again

in the darkness

giving up inside

as I have.

arpeggios of stillness

skirling stars tiltawhirl above

watery faint sounds

trickling down the leylines

of my soul

rising aetheric vapors

strain against the borders of individuality

twining to become an astral web

hoping to snare

the next epiphany

when the waters divide the waters

all over again

finding that point

where the initiation resides

nestled beneath

the end of the dream