Love Poem: After the Interim
Andrea Dietrich Avatar
Written by: Andrea Dietrich

After the Interim

She met him in the interim,
 that space between endings and beginnings;
                                 a summer fling; 
a sowing of her not so wild oats 
          was all that it was meant to be. 
But he was so much more.

She found herself languishing
 pool side on his patio 
                  as long June afternoons
 dripped    like    molasses  into    nights. 

Sometime in July, 
her illusion that she’d had of independence
burst              like pyrotechnics in the sky. 
And oh, those nights they imbibed! 
Her nights with him   ran 
                            like the blood-red wine 
in the goblets 
cupped 
by the trembling hands   of two inebriates. 
 But the stems of those goblets
 slipped quickly from their fingers, 
and love’s elixir 
spilled much too quickly
                              into tomorrow.

Along with the dry protracted days,  
she - like desert grasses - 
withered            as she waited. 
 always thirsting for the nights! 
But by the time August had arrived,
 she also had come to realize that,
 like the yellowed grasses, 
she needed more than passion at dusk. 
The nights, in fact, 
had brought her 
no less scorching    than the sun.
 And what she’d thought 
was more than she could want 
became              much less 
than he could ever give.

Some essential thing was lacking,
some need deep inside her
not being fulfilled.
In those long afternoons 
as she'd waited for him,
she'd come to realize what was missing.

By September - back in school -
she knew her ardor for him
had barely waned, 
yet still. . . 
she knew what she had to do.
And so, she looked to autumn's advent
for October's cooling winds
to sweep away 
            the remnants
                     of ashes in her soul.

2/26/2015
For Laura Loo's Free Verse on Sadness (again) Poetry Contest