A New Chapter

How dreary and dull and self-pitying I have been!

A new life is about to begin.

I am hopeful and happy, and look forward to my time in my space of solitude, where everything has it's place and I shall explore.

Perhaps

Where are you, my lonely poet?

Maybe it's be cause I never met you
that I'm still in love with you.

Only I didn't know it.
Until it was too late-

Maybe I'm still in love with you
Because it was too late.

But I don't think so.

Because I'd forgotten about you.

Until I glimpsed your mind.
Again.

My shadow.

My waking dream.

My shadow

You've haunted me ever since

I first stood at my window, looking out to the mystery of the distant hills, bluegreeen with the scent of rain, tendrils of mist from the cloud dragons, roiling along their undulating flanks.

I first looked out over the vast horizon
From the highest point I could find, and saw a world thrilling and unknown, as far as the eye could reach

I breathed freedom
As I swam as naked in the ocean's warm embrace, for all the world as though in a bathtub, the western sunset along the rim of the world and the edge of coming night the only walls between existence and eternity.

But you were not there.

I didn't know you.

I still don't.

Am I lost?

Have I lost you?

Are you lost to me?

...

Truth, and Fictions

I've never had to pretend here. But now I can't be free here either.

In my little enclave of thought and text.

So you haven't freed me. After all.

You've chained me into a new cage.

I don't want to hurt or offend or create awkwardness with things that seem too personal to be voiced. And I feel an obligation.

But then thinking like that is a misstep. A mistruth. A misconception. You should know that by now. A not-so-simple misconception. Like most things, it's only a secret if you choose to give it that power. Spill it and suddenly, it HAS no power over you.

...

Parallel World

Do I miss her?

I don't know what it was, about her. She always had a touch of that stiff awkwardness, that reined-in restraint, of a creature that isn't quite used to being around people. Or perhaps it was just that she was often so queerly proper. So formal.

It was almost as though she lived in another world. Behind the veneer of awkard ordinariness, she was somehow, odd. Out of place.

Too young, and certainly not wealthy enough, to be exactly... eccentric.

She had something of that air. It reminds me of what they said of Eliza Doolitle. About how there was something... incomprehensible... about her... to them. That it was almost as if she had grown up in a garden. Ironically, Covent Garden, of course.

I can hear the words. Her words.
In my mind.
Again.

"I don't want you to be the last-chance streetcar."

"I don't want you to become the one I ended up with because some biological clock ticked me into it."

"I'm leaving you."

"Leaving you could be the biggest mistake of my life."

"But that's also why Not Leaving you could be a bigger mistake."

Do I miss her?

I don't know.

To be honest.

I don't know.

...

Portents

And the rain begins to fall outside.
How apt.

Whispering.

Insistent.

Cold.

Rhythmic. Steady. Increasing. Like the questions in my heart.

Cold. Sour. Seeping through my bones.

The fear again.

That old fear. That pain that I had thought you cured.

Something is wrong somewhere.

Gnawing at my guts.

If you had cared for me, or thought of me, would you not want to read my words? This random spillage of verbiage, that holds so much of me.

IS it true?
I am... lonely. I am... alone.

In the rain, outside, a cat or kitten mews. Forlorn. Dismayed. Afraid.
How apt.

I do not want to see you.
I want to talk to you to hear your sound. But it would do no good.
I do not want to talk to you.

Perhaps it would be best if we spent some time alone. Apart.

Leave me.

The indicators are warnings, portents. I don't know how to protect myself.

Leave me.

I will fall asleep with my fear tonight. Clutching my fear close to my heart, in secret. Perchance my dreams will tell me something, perchance... what dreams may come...

I barely slept last night.

For bold new dreams came strangely upon me,
And dreamt me awake while the night was still young.

I dreamt.
And woke up wanting you.

While you were not there.
And yet, everywhere.

And so I could not sleep.
Alone in the soft, feeling, darkness.

Alone, with the warmth of my body.

Though we are not yet together
Already

You have
saved me from loss, from the long, lonely longing,
the lifeless embrace of inanimate pillows.

You have felt
just as I always thought you should feel
You seem somehow too perfect
to be quite entirely real
Truth or fantasy?
In time, I suppose, we'll see.

Suddenly

Suddenly
You were.

And I was
Free.

Unbound from the weight of old shackles of pain-
those old chafe-marks of violent anguish and strain

Where the presence of beauty once brought me chill grief
There is now only lightness and silent relief.
Your first touch had cast out all the old demons of grief.

Passion
can wait.

For this quiet, still and painless joy
that salves the fear marks branded deep
and raw into my soul

That seared my nerves so much so that I
at last forgot how to feel.

Perhaps you will teach me that too, as I heal.

Stream of consciousness

did you lose me? ... wild child abandoned left lost forgotten

forgotten, our moments of ... quiet perfection

i am alone again

and you were barely here

barely there

i still remember

but i too am forgetting

it was so frictionless

so perfect

that i am forgetting

as you too have forgotten

so easily

as easily as you slipped into my life

you have slipped away

slipped my mind

quiet child

forgotten

forgetting

The brief contact that hinted at fuller magic

A spell, a glamour, more potent,
pervasive and strong as
we ever dared dream
that we have not touched yet
and now will never

The future lies unwritten empty pages
In an unopened book

That we forgot to find
in the libraries
of our mind

Speaking

She had a strange style. Didn't speak like other people.

She purred, in a steamy, sensuous drawl that seemed to queen it over the rest of the room.