To Love No More
I carried you into my heart
But one arm was missing
As single wing and one handed
I pulled you inside
All the while, you pointing at
My lost absent limb
You told me you’d love me
If I could find that one missing part
The part that would then
Make me whole
I looked into tomorrow
And searched through the past
But my arm had reached out
For something beyond my ability to see
I could still feel the numbing sensation
Of pain
Where the arm had previously
Been attached
The vibration of loss
Now prosthetic for all that was missing
You pitied my deformity as I hid
My eyes
As best I could with only one hand
Telling me the fault was mine
For always reaching beyond what I
Could know or see
And with your final stroke of meanness
And my last ounce of blood
You left me further disabled
Climbing back outside a wish I knew
Was never to be mine
When you left you found the old world
Different than the one you thought you knew
A desert of frozen stone with a black sky
Surrounding the stillness of your abandoned love
As you hesitated to turn around and
Reenter my world
The one that just a moment ago you had
Admonished and left for good
A lone arm reached out and closed the door
Behind you
Leaving you alone in a sea of loneliness
And despair,
—to love no more
(Villanova Pennsylvania: August, 2016)
|