Unspoken...a poem written on a train

Unspoken

 

Planted, immobilized

Ripped jeans and wind-mussed hair

I'll miss you madly

What I want to say

But want and need are different

Set apart from one another

By the power of a heart or mind

Or often simply due to whim or chance

 

Ever, maybe never

Who knows when or how or why

Or even if?

But still I'll hope and maybe dream

With wishes that it won't keep you awake

And if, then just a little

Not for long, I promise

I won't fade away this time

 

There isn't much to tell

Nothing I could say you'd need to hear

Or that I'd want to share

So shy, so proud

(Most likely that's the case, we both know well)

 

So far apart, the miles stretching thin

They fall away and disappear like time

And somewhere in the distance

Lies the past already written

It glistens like a memory

Or dream forgotten

Held within a rhyme

Will I stay awake tonight

Watching shadows traipse across my walls?

The echoes of the progress of my life

So bittersweet these thoughts of make-believe

But different now and willing not to sleep

Aware (and maybe hoping)

That the reason is

I'm wandering through your dreams

 

 

Washington Square (inspired by the song of the same title by the Counting Crows)

Washington Square

If I left right now, would the ghost of you follow me, or would it wait in the old building we called home for so long? A heavy object, a faded thing you left behind, not meant for relocation – not now, not ever. Just a particle of us, of a something that once used to be and cannot be forgotten.

 

I flip a light switch, half expecting to see you sitting at the piano we’d bought together, poised to touch the keys. Some random, phantom song you’d played still lurks around the corner, a fragrance in the motionless, cold air.

 

Unnecessary things worn threadbare, mended and re-mended parts of wounded spirits now flown free, but somehow pining for that long-ago solidity that kept them tethered and not drifting in the dark.

 

I wonder where your feet are walking now; if you know how far they’ve taken you from me. Do you ever look behind you? Do you listen to the birds sing, like we used to in the park? Do your memories feed the loneliness that kept you up at night, or do they soothe you like a lullaby, bring comfort to you in your dreams? A solitary presence in this absent place and time. Like the everything and nothing that you left for me to find.

 

Do you dance between the shadows and the glow from distant streetlights? Does anybody know you now, and did I ever know you then? The clock on the wall is stagnant, and as my vision of you vanishes I can feel the numbers fall and pile upon the floor. Or perhaps they fly away, slip past me through the open window – the one without the candle I’ll always wonder if I should have left burning there for you. A token of my wish that you could find me in the dark. Or maybe I just wonder if you’d try to.

 

How many days have I outnumbered in my many incarnations, turning old things into new, recycling tears and faking hopeful strength? Turning moments into years that pass me by without a word from you, without a thought of me. These walls around me breathe but never let me draw a breath. They keep me close with hollow, empty arms. No warmth – no beating heart to give them life. Only vacant rooms with cloudy windows – views that look back on the things that used to be. Surrounded by the past with you while you keep moving on. Forever here; forever far away.

 

I walk to the hill to watch the sunrise, thinking it’s still nighttime where you are, or want to be. You always wore the evening like a blanket, traveled with it to another new escape. When the sun comes home tonight I’ll leave this place for good – lock up the memories and all my thoughts of you and leave them here to wait for nothing. Only linger with the ghost of someone – just a someone – who never wanted me to find him and is never coming home again. Traveling onward, away from me. Away from here.