The first cut is the deepest...

For A. M. E.


Once our young bodies twined and writhed, reaching
for an ineffable moment of release
that could only be known once we gave it
a name; so we lay panting together,
spent, but unfulfilled.

                                     Still, you overwhelmed
me with wonder, with want, with need, but my
childish hands spread wide, letting it trickle
through my fingers; my eyes screwed up against
the effulgence of the promise of our
naive passion (exposed, in its guileless
infancy, to the scathing paroxysms
of all the rage and hate and spite and fear
the world had to offer), thus I could not
see it for what it was: something so new
and so portentous, just barely breathing,
its pulse quickening beneath the surface.
I kept my eyes closed tight and the brightness
burned through my eyelids, tinting my world pink.

Then suddenly it all lay broken, smashed
to pieces at our feet -- unfixable.
I looked up at you, both of us so very
young, but older than we will ever be.
I took just one step toward you, stumbled,
cutting my feet on the shattered remains
of the shell that once insulated our
felicity, turned away from the pain
in your eyes and the shame and agony
in my chest. I staggered away from you,
ran as fast and as far as my cut and
bleeding feet and my cut and bleeding heart
would allow.

                       But the wounds were still there, blood
seeping through my shirt: so I stitched them closed
with sutures I can never remove, your
name written indelibly across my
heart with golden threads that shall never break.


11/02/2010 revised 16/12/2010

Philosophy digression

I never loved you.
That is what you assume.
That is what you will say.
I did not return your cloying sentiment
     Couched in tired language
     Choking me with cliches.

I left: a fact undeniable.
Not that I seek to deny it.  I know
I did.
          Deliberately.
                                 With forethought.
                                                                  And relief.

I took your philosophy of taking
Whatever makes you happy
And made it my own
     By rejecting
                           what made me
                                                      unhappy.

But how dare I decide
                                      what made me unhappy
                                                                                 was you?

28.11.10