Reasons

    
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Sitting across,

you looked in my eyes,

wrote untrue words, drew

lines,

on me,

that I need to erase,

that warped our memories and

crushed

days and nights,

of knowing firmly, what I am,

in your mind, in your heart,

under your

mouth

and your hands

from someone precious,

and carried in your soul,

to someone who fills, gaps, alone,

not a constant

but an occasional thing;

feelings on, feelings off; like a

passing wasp’s sting that smarts,

intense for a while,

then fades and erodes

as a passionate smile between

those, I know,

light each others’

worlds; a momentary sparkle

of a diamond,

or a glint, of the pearl

I knew myself,

to be,

in your eyes,

until you were wearing this new

disguise that denies

all I felt, and yet see:

you are not, you are not,

what you’d have

me believe,

not just a taker, out to

deceive; who casts and reels

however he pleases for no reasons,

more,

than he can;

that is not the measure of

the man that sits now

carving his name

on my heart;

he does it

just the same

as at the very start; when I know,

I carved mine on his too,

and slowly thereafter, neither

one of us moved without

holding the other…

…cradling them,

in their chest,

each day;

veiled and undercover

to protect what ignites in a look,

or a touch;

not nothing, at all, but far too much

to define,

or ever describe –

something we cannot help

but keep hiding,

like a heart,

drawn quickly, in the sand:

of me,

of  you,

this is all I have ever believed;

the only reasons I understand.

The Last Rose

     
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She only wanted

to be loved like the last rose,

it wasn’t a lot to ask,

and she showed you exactly how

to love her; her present,

her future,

…her past,

it wasn’t any ability

that you lacked,

you were not incapable

of filling

unconventional cracks and the voids that she mentioned,

it was only that you didn’t

pay her enough attention, to learn all the

littlest things;

and so if you have never seen

her sing,

while she

cooks dinner,

never seen her spin around

and dance,

when she changes the sheets -

perhaps it is only

because you were asleep,

when she asked you to know her.

And if you wonder,

what she looks like

on a freedom-kissed beach,

or how strong she is whenever

she reaches,

the top,

of an arduous climb,

or what she wears,

indoors,

on a lazy,

Saturday night…if you don’t know her,

makeup-less,

with hair, tied, in a bun,

or soaked, and tanned, and wild,

under

a beating,

foreign sun,

perhaps it is because you never got done,

making her feel, like that

very,

last rose:

…most beautiful and cherished and plenty…to you,

being whichever ‘her’,

she chose.