The
Wings & Ways of SeparationPiece by piece
And inch by inch
You go and slip
Away from me
In the dance
Of disentangling.
It starts when your
Eyes look away
A second too soon,
And ends when even
In dreams you can't recall
That special thing in my face
Which made me come
Into focus in your heart.
It starts with a touch
That's only half aware
And ends when lying
Alone at night
In the cool and empty
Spaces in the bed
There is no tactile trace
Of the way my leg would twist
Around yours like a vine
And close the loop
Of energy between us.
One day
Not far from the beginning,
You don't recall the line
From my favorite poem --
The one I said made me
Think of everything in the world
That was so all alone
And afraid
But alive anyway.
Another day
Close to the end
You no longer hear my voice
Whisper sweet surrender
In your head.
I have grown small
In the silence,
My words forgotten
And no longer comforting
Or familiar.
This is how, unraveling,
Somehow I begin to become
A set of constructs,
Simplified in shorthand,
Reduced to accessible,
Digestable sound bites
For the sake of storytelling.
And for a while sometime,
You love your memories
And reflections off my facets.
But these abbreviated half tones
And after images,
Glowing in the hearths you tend
And placed upon the altars
Of precious untouchables,
Do not grow,
Cannot shift.
In them I freeze into solidity
Lose my soft and swaying vitality
And become --
Just another girl.
Infinitely less
Than the everything
Your heart once knew.