past tense

Your long and labored days, your slow impassioned nights,  your set tos and work arounds and heart’s true and fondest all fall into the unbeknownst. The pause before a mirror, the sigh that shakes your shoulders, the fleeting smile or tear remain the refrains of habitual fictions. The dollhouse reverse engineered from words and lore and living, the irresistible fantasies that fill in the gaps. Detective work and first impressions, the unlovable forever vulnerable to the far fetched yarns of improbable romance. The things I have to tell myself. The things I never do.

The art left long ago, it ran away with my anima. Now I root around with my homemade thorny crown and my breath bitter and sharp. I beat the bandstand with my pots and pans, I paint the sky with grim curse and blasphemous epitaph. I scrape and stumble and call the clouds. I am adrift upon a tide of smoke and indolence, still fixated upon your flesh. The sort of gaze that won’t relent. The sort of love best left.

I think about you as the night fills the window. I think of you as I turn and tangle in the dark. Words whispered to my pillow. Dreams spoken aloud to the room. The days turn and glare, I go nowhere, dark altar prayers shudder and gasp. A rubber band, an earring, the necklace with the broken clasp. Afternoons adrift and the past on pause. The heart a horror, these limbs restless and lonesome, I spill spells and weave wonders. Your name, your name, into the silence.  Your path occluded and unknowable. My part all past tense.