I’ve been writing some longer poems that don’t translate well to instagram (which is where I normally plop my poems.) So I put this little story here.
The Last Letter to My Lover
Oh my love,
My willow breeze, my daily bread, my sweet spring…
I cannot fathom you;
Only through the gaps between the mountains
where the sun lays to rest.
How can I deny you?
But somehow I must find the way.
To abandon my heart
would be to abandon yours.
I so wish I was born at some other juncture.
The one where I was a watering hole
and not this barrel wave,
this immovable force that allows no end to the beginnings.
Although I have endless need of you
I have no want for a husband,
so I cannot make me your wife.
What I wake up dreaming for
is not our promised permanence,
not laying our change to rest.
It is your hands; the ones that silently zip up my dress in the morning.
Your heart; the one that leaves the kitchen light on for my late returns.
Your fingertips; the ones under the hair on my neck.
The having of you to gaze at while others are talking.
How you wince at the record table scratching.
Lips on my breastbone as my everyday waking.
To cage these creatures would be to kill them.
The only promise I could ask of you
is to stand by me while our tree of time withers
and bask in its shade with me.
But what kind of proposal is that?
With you dear, all the sky is mine.
This I cannot abandon too.
So I suppose all this to say,
will you marry me?