Your Silence, Your Loss

With impending strain day by day you deny

ever having loved me, but it's a lie,

for in the flutter of your lashes and your warm blush

I hear all the words you promised to hush.

You try with sincere eagerness to turn,

but I notice the way your skin will burn

when I barely brush against the back of your hand,

watching you struggle to maintain command.

Every part of my whisper you lean close to hear

though I'm not speaking to you, and yet in fear

you retreat to the sideline faking comfort,

unaware of how uneasy you look, and hurt.

My beckoning to you goes by in a wave,

pretending you're busy, but the feeling is grave,

because the tension in your chest grows only deeper,

and the confidence you had becomes even weaker.

I laugh beside you openly as welcoming as can be

to show you there is no reason to act so shyly,

and yet the tension in your jaw expresses the seriousness

of how severely you refrain to hold what you long to confess.

Covering as much as you can, but shaking still,

making me wonder why you refuse to let your secret spill

thinking maybe it's my fault, maybe I'm lacking,

but when I glance away from you, I sense your aching.

From a distance your stare explains everything;

the uncertainty inside your heart complicating

the thoughts in your mind, the common intelligence

of fighting for what you love no matter the expense.

And yet you linger barely in my reach

like a lost child waiting for me to take your arm and teach,

but this is life, and some lessons you learn on your own,

and so if you desire me, take me alone.

Years and years go by- my patience taken for granted,

spending countless days without a kiss, having waited,

but you kept walking past- your love never came across,

and so I can only say, your silence was your loss.

Disquieted Silhouette

Faded in the wind,
the sketched silhouette figure standing in the distance,
lines of charcoal silver wavering in the heat,
an illusion to the easily deceived eye,
waiting, waiting- waiting for my hands
but they do not reach; they do not try;
they stay by my side, trusted loyalty,
slipped into my pockets, buried deep amidst the denim
cover, strong but wearing with time, with use,
with my reluctance to expose them to you,
laying my worth on the line.

Silent mirage- not a word, not a breath,
no reason to say a thing when silence says it all,
the secrets circling atop the coaster wind,
with the hay-balls rolling across the dunes,
before unmoving feet, dead suspense,
a thrill repeated over and over in misunderstanding,
not ironically, but where we ground ourselves,
in front of thousands of people, none of them aware,
passing by ordinarily, boringly, never there,
like in a desert, fabrication and I alone,
bearing the heavy thirst unquenched.

Unblinking eyes, staring bold, dark, transparent
marbles, hollow, as an unfilled log, empty
inside from long years of nothingness,
growing and living for no one and no thing
but for itself, yet dallying in the same place
in hope of reaching the untouchable sky
with toes steady in the dirt, ours in the sand,
coarse and gritty, spoiled by the shortness
of temper and ingratitude, misfortune dancing
past mimicking a beautiful ballerina lonesome
and in need of this attention,
here- here in the vast land of desolation and regret.

An indifference between the realistic and the portrait,
dead though living through yet,
imprints in the weariness of time beneath those torn sandals,
smaller than my own, cheap and forgettable,
still clinging to one single day, a moment when the
ineffectuality of someone's kindness meant something more,
however now, however then, barren, dry hilltops
have blossomed in the surrounding as the mind within
disfigures in the darkness of dust,
a speck of pettiness blowing away amongst other specks,
and so what troubles the individual memory
is only one bother in this chaotic sand storm,
waves of combined negligence, exhaustion, and malcontent.

Motionless, strands of broken-ended hair frozen despite the
hot wind, flowing uncongenially, pupils unaffected
despite the rise of the bright, glaring sun come to watch above,
brushing aside the protective clouds, emphasizing
your fine outline in my gaze, an astonishing clearness of your frown,
twisted and subjected to the course of age,
battered and beaten, tossed by the promises
of illicit shadows with tender hands, having fallen innumerable times
into delusive pools, cool and fresh, landing in the sodden earth,
bitter tastes, bitter haste, bitter realizations,
waiting then, waiting now, waiting forever,
hauntingly, no intention of letting go, disregarding being disregarded,
confronting my fixed eyes sorrowfully, painfully,
bringing my soul through what was in a million years, in a breath,
standing still, reaching, waiting, waiting, and then gone in the sudden shade
while the pleasant pour of rain blends my tired tears.