The instinct is in there,
still,
like muscle memory,
no tension,
just moving like
an arrow in flight.
A flick of a switch,
and I'm in gear,
chasing the movement
of something I did not need
to be taught
to run after;
just as simple as a greyhound
responding to something
in my blood.
You smile,
and I have seen
the rabbit.
I need to stretch my legs.
When the flash of gold
rolled into her path
she flashed back to the
way her feet moved
slower on the rolling timbers
above a wide dark sea
and stopped despite
her former resolve,
the taste of a quest
associated in her mind
with that shiny aura
and her known examples of men
that were not so bad,
after all.
I won't try words
where only time
can only barely
mend the ache
or throw a silver lining
under the tarnished
sky, but I am here
to listen if
only to your silences
and sit with the
part of you that
needs someone
when the rest of
you wants to be
alone and
chase the storm
that has found you.
The loyal hound of my thought follows you,
(though you never called for it).
Not to spy,
not too close, just curious where you might go,
wondering if you wanted company--
that sort of thing.
It isn't much.
My heart wants to protect you
like the glass of a lantern
that lets in air but shuts out
an extinguishing breeze--
I think these things but freeze
before I could say them aloud.
It's both not a lot
and seems like too much.
I can't protect you
from time,
or care,
or loss
but trust you are safe
from me.
Every grief becomes its own creature,
a familiar stranger,
individual as a fingerprint,
independent as it comes and goes.
It cries in the morning
like a baby
and aches and groans at night
like an old wound.
It wanders in unexpected
with the face you know,
but sometimes it just sits
unseen and
you sit with it,
sharing the memories of what was
and the future things that will not
be.
It's nothing to fear.
You wouldn't know
because I couldn't say
the feeling I had
when I held you for
one minute
and wished it were
for life--
that minute was life to me.
Warming my hands at this fire
while wearing kerosene gloves;
I've never known how to be
really cautious around love.
My deepest thoughts left unspoken
and never given a name
will persist in silence unbroken
even as I burst into flame.
