With two sways of the ink
I was penning my heart in
verse; a storyline of a love
I wished would have no end.
Blending promises from the
edge of my pen, into nights
of hope, left to carry on with
every new moon. I was the
writer and she was my poem;
carrying love with each new
storyline starting with a sole
concept of beauty beyond
the heart, where every word I
knew, came from loving her.
It wasn’t a soft graze,
left to timid lips and
hands like before –
you held passion in
a kiss, interlocking
truths of our hearts
with every sway of
a sigh, with trailing
hands mapping out
missed constellations
across our bodies as
the night kept warm
in our thoughts, with
us once more on the
verge of hope and a
lasting discovery.
she is my favorite of poems,
constantly changing in shifts
of creativity, burning from the
edges of the page and sinking
into blue ink stains – her verses
are curved in rhythms of gold
mixed with champagne, with a
light echo of memories swirling
in the blank spaces between the
daydreams and jazz. she is my
kind of poetry, a verse free from
rhyme and restriction, painting
the inside of my heart in words
set to love and possibilities in a
future cast in the clouds for two.
Autumn was fading in a blur
of orange encrusted promises
as the first hint of snow was
falling on the horizon, with a
tangle of white whistling onto
the blank page leaving behind
softened shades of forgotten
words, entrusting the landscape
in starlight and glistening snow –
the ashes of autumn left fading,
by icicles as sharp as truth left
dangling over the page, with a
blanket left behind of words to
be uncovered, as crisp dances
of snow begin to fall again.
Within two shades of silence,
I am still wishing the idea of your
name on my lips, whistling away
blushes of memories against my
reflection, hoping for a change of
season to cradle me in their arms
as nights are growing longer, with
the days burning to ashes. I am
battling the silence of my mind
versus the quietness in my heart,
where I cannot fathom a victor, for
neither are leading me back to you.
I’ve spent too many nights
staring at the stars for loose
answers to notice the path I
was wandering; left and then
right, my feet continuing on
while my head was caught in
longings of the future, with a
step in the right or the wrong
direction, no one was capable
of saying, as I ventured on my
own, lonely meandering past
sonnets and lost daydreams,
naming each star as a desire
to be near you as I passed.
Scraped together in mementos
of happier days and longing nights
are pieces of rubble from a broken
heart; cast in half light candles of
that first evening we spent beneath
the stars, with notes gently battered
back and forth, written in the keno
crayon that we’d slide across the bar
as though we could not get enough
of showcasing our love, by way of
stolen heartbeats and a future mapped
out in beer stains and crayon – left to
gather together in daydreams lost as
debris, stuffed in a shoebox, as worn
as my heart, filtered away in hope, set
to hold all pieces of my memories.
With the looming question of
what I see when I gaze upon
you, in every ounce of silence
between us, I can only reply:
you are love and innocence
back at twenty one, standing
at the corner with me, as I’m
wearing my worn heart on
my sleeve asking to kiss you.
My face growing pale with
every second, as yours only
grows in shades of pink as
you whisper yes – the light
sigh from your lips being
carried into the breezes,
returning me to home.
The words so fearlessly hung
from her lips, yet she refused
to speak them in the darkest
hours of untold truth – instead
struggling to gather strength to
mumble echoes from her heart
that would cause cracks in my
own unsteady foundation. She
was aware of very little beyond
the coming farewell, but she
spoke with a certainty of it in
her heart and it showed on the
delicate lips that I used to be
allowed to kiss with my own
certainty goodnight, yet now
had to casually watch tremble
as she tried repeatedly to say
the words that went beyond a
promise. Those words fearless,
yet the actions were fading in
moments as I turned to kiss her
lips one last time in memory.
hope was numbered in days,
limited to dash marks on the
calendar, set to the rising of
the sun and then moon; as if
time was not a destructive
enough force, twisting and
bending hope into fragments
of the truth, believing in the
idea of second chances long
past memories in disguise.
with every newly fallen star
we were running out of days
to count – lies to believe and
truths to alter into our own
interpretations, calling them
hope as though we could hold
them in our embrace, tightly
bound in possibilities, to help
lighten the nights when the
stars are refusing to shine.
Storylines in Verse 