Ink-Stricken
Somewhere between
vowels and consonants
you disappeared
Although I looked for you
beneath apostrophes
semicolons and quotation marks,
Really
"where are you love" I groaned
"I'm here, expecting you" I moaned
Commas and fullstops did I leave behind
dash-bridges I hopped over
and question marks I climbed,
and through the narrow pathways
of tankas and haikus
? tumbled down to footers
page numbers and footnotes.
Out of the frontispiece pier
untied my sailboat's ropes
and pierced your pages waves,
but moored into your colophon's bay.
I yelled
"Nothing, my love, a single sign"
my words were left unsaid.
Line after line I stepped
down every word you've written
and went up even more
in case I caught you up.
I yearned for your caressing touch
while you turned your pages
but you, writing about the self I am no more
no notice did you take of me.
when you took up another book,
The tears I cried the cover burned
wetting your poems' ink
and washed me down to your new reading
to new adventures
to new endeavours.
And you, my love,
thinking of rhymes
you took my hand
to take me out
to dine, to breakfast and to lunch.
And I, my love,
followed your lead
knowing that at my every heart beat
you'd only hear your verses chime.
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