So,
You think that it is ended,
That it is all my fault.
I can bear the weight of our responsibilities,
I can bear the weight of the pain of our unborn affair,
Trapped within my belly like this wound that now ails me.
I can absorb it,
Heal these wounds in me
Because I still love.
I walk around our city,
Streets from where we met and fell in love –
Whether you choose to acknowledge the truth of that or not –
And I still fall in love –
But not with you –
With city streets and the dim grey light of an autumn day
Upon tall brick walls holding in the greenery, the ancient stones of the dead;
With the tall spires of obelisks and mirrored skyscrapers miles beyond;
With the kindness of strangers who, in an innocence you covet, connect.
I can fall in love with everything,
Remaining lovely through waves of quiet grief that spill my loss…
Yet you, in handsome suit and cuff links,
Cannot admit the truth of yours,
Cannot admit the truth of ours,
Cannot admit the truth of us;
Your face, your eyes darkened in unclaimed grief;
Your lips snarled in bitter, unspoken and mis-directed self-reproach;
Your fingers curled in hated agony that I yet see…
Can you not?
Will you deny what is so obvious to me?
Will you continue to believe your mass of Sultan’s Men and Girls
Who bow so eagerly before their master,
And call them “friend” who abets your lies?
I am the child who is too innocent to lie;
I am the child who cares not for your throne;
I am the child who points, incredulous, and cries:
“The man wears nothing but skin upon his bones!”
Will you banish me from your sight, ashamed to admit
That you were not even duped, but did cowardly concede
To ideas sold at the price of life and love and dreams;
Will you ask me to pluck my own eyes out so I may never see?
The pain I bear of My Love’s distance,
Of unjust banishment hanging upon his brow
And he pays, though I would not have it,
With his beauty even, with his consciousness,
And calls it “progress,” thereby forsakes his very name.
Woe does not become you, my dear; you wear it poorly.
For me, it is a veil I must occasionally wear.
I fear it not: I love too well beneath;
It guards love, beauty and my life
As your ways, you – and others – would try as well to do
Yet fail, so terribly, and miserably too.
You do not look. You will not see:
Not me; not yourself, your friends, anything.
You will not love, and cannot, thus, connect with reality.
Be true, my love.
Rest, breathe, connect.
Become yourself, and swim back to me.
I have not left your lands,
Have not left you,
Have not left me;
Connect with me, not after another year,
But now, and soon,
Before your guilt catches and strangles your given name.
You have not wronged me, my love.
Your lies do not wrestle me.
I only miss you, as I’ve always said,
And your heart knows you love me.
Why else the greyed face?
Why else the sunken cheeks and blackened eyes?
Live, my love.
Forgive yourself; let go of me.
See, then, if we are drawn still –
As we still are, through our own friends and chance acquaintances;
As we still are, through our respective lives;
As we still are, through promises once made
From your heart and soul to mine
From my heart and soul to yours
When we were He and She, in flesh, for some few days.
Oceans of Mine 