Memories

I wish I could forget

The way you hold your head

In dappled sunlight,

Wide smile splitting the rays with beams,

It seems I am too much

or too little

or not enough

to fully find you

in a half-hearted, half-empty tragedy.

I wish I could forget the times

You sat down to find

        me crying, hiding tears in the folds of hands

and I wish I could forget

The warmth of your laugh

on Sunday afternoons, drowning out

the cicadas with its air of intensity.

You don't deserve it,

This time-honored, sepia-toned droning

in my head.

Instead, you deserve to be

set out to sea, free

Never to see me,

That fickle friend, never lover,

The dreamer yet always the diver,

The one who took the fall

and you didn't catch.

Instead, you deserve to be

forgotten.

I want you to remember me,

Immortalize every fallen tear,

The sear of my hand on your shoulder,

The way you should have thought, "I want to hold her."

and battled the fear 

of remembering when and where

and who and how

this started,

I want you to remember.

But it seems

You are the one forgetting,

My tired eyes and hopeful tries

To attest to and win,

more lose some than winsome,

that distant friend.

And I, I the one who remembers.

The Might Have.

You are taking too long for me,
the gap spanning between here and there
far too large for me
to remember the gap between your teeth
and for you to remember the gap my smile used to be
when you just talked to me.
You are taking too long for me to love.

Maybe our future speaks in sad love songs,
forlorn and adorning the walls of teenage angst long ago,
and our love was meant to die.
Testify what I mean to you,
Tell me my worth and perhaps
the diamonds will fall from my lips,
emeralds brimming at the cusp,
rubies dotting my eyelids.
Perhaps, perhaps then you will remember
and dismember the silence
that once was potential.

What is love
that has yet to take flight?
What is love
that is unrequited?
What is the feeling of hope and half-hearted disaster,
lounging here where my heart used to be,
a tumultuous black hole of doubt and desire,
fire in my stomach,
I want you to know me...

Yet you are anomaly,
I can't seem to get you, or forget you.
Countless hours spent gathering flowers,
shredding petals in pursuit of the great
perhaps. Perhaps then you might recall
the gall I had
to dismember the silence
and wonder if I could love you.

The Wait

There should be a word
For the sound of waiting, and hesitating
Here.
Standing, waiting here where I
knew that I would be.
See, you didn't just have me at hello.
You had me at
front-row silence, slow-smile, cue-the-background-music
contact.
I don't remember when we first met
and yet I'm sure it was uneventful
because here I am, still waiting.

But you only wait and hesitate for the things
you really want.
You wait for meteor showers on cool summer nights
and your long lost lover on moonlit streets
and the sound of rain after a bone-dry drought,
You wait.

You are lump-in-the-back-of-the-throat,
You are finger-tapping and shaking-knee,
I want you to know all of me...
You are that type of waiting.

And I have waited.
It has been nearly six years.
I am tired of settling for less than I think I deserve,
and Honey...you are far from settling.
You are worth waiting for.
I hope you feel the same.
Please don't blame me for counting the moments before
you look away,
I'm just waiting...wondering when exactly I want to say...
I'm waiting for you.

The Turn

You are hostile turnstile,
You are danger in a bottle,
asking me to wait a while,
misshapen and warped like corkskew,
You, you are deadpan silence in a prison of my own making,
You.

I can never seem to shake you,
the tear in my seams, the shake in my step,
The hiccup, the mix-up,
The riddle, the joke.
I misspoke.
You are the tide turning on forgotten waves,
and I,
I am only sailing.