“Write about an unrequited love that keeps me awake.”
She walks without slack
loose with wine and sand
roaming by the waves
scratching with the seaweed
she is a hymn from the tumbling tides
The warm and friendly sun hums along.
Once the sands push for the moon
and the sea curls for more sea
and the clapping wet world comes closer
the sun belly flops – bright to dim
she unhooks her hands
I search with my steps unkempt
losing the sandy path
I struggle to see her now
through my moonlight,
my hands cold
and I find only a foggy whisper filling my head.
Under my crooked helm I pull
like rain, I draw the echo down
scattering in white splash noise
needling my best heartbeats
like a masterpiece wrapping myself
away from control, sinking in the delta.
Growing and shedding all growls I peel
freshly as a raspberry picked messy
flowing and drumming
blindly red as a baby born
thrown together in the lush.
Back to the start, I crave better
sunshine for our mistakes
fondly, I lie with our eyes
closed with smiles wide
weighing memory by the glimmering distraction
boxing all Pandora black.
“I’ve seen it all.”
Not every life is spent on the airy breeze,
looking for the holes of a tree to perch inside.
But the walls we draw around ourselves,
make us hide from the roads that wander
and our patched kisses like grassy slumber
waiting for the soft toes of a child.
Photographs pull us into towers,
and the true affections peer at us
from the night, as we draw curtains,
and our world shifts closed.
If you see it all, but never know
the heart beating from the oaks
or the tides bearing salty breath
or the snaking rivers gently woven,
then you will only know the stones
that stub your toes and make it rain
on the sharp world you flicker.