“The quiet glow of her gently sleeping face.
Her soft, content breathing lulling me to her.
Her sleeping sweetness makes me think of
bliss, peace and happiness lost.
A sleeping loveliness I will cry
over for ages and wring my hands
wishing I was a better man,
worthy of her waking eyes.”
That’s a poem I wrote a few years ago that rushed back into my memory this morning. I made a few editorial changes as something about it didn’t seem to flow quite right. I think it’s a little better now. It’s a funny thing; heartache. It’s amazing how its ravenous claws, so lax for so long, suddenly tighten and clamp down causing a quickening and nervousness in the chest.
Sleeplessness arrives to accompany the heartache and all you can do is roll around in the bed, once shared, and try and force yourself to think about something else. No plate tectonics or climate change could seem to shake her from my sleepless brain.
It’s pathetic I know. I certainly should be well over her. It’s been years and there’s a gulf of time between us, a mountain range of time, the distance from the Earth to the Sun. There is no rhyme or reason for the curious fear and longing that has so swiftly risen in my soul. It’s as if Cupid woke from a long dream and upon waking remembered to turn my heartscrews to hellfire.
Hindsight passion is also a strange animal. I often wonder why I was never this emotional or expressive with her when I had the chance and only now see how deeply she had become part of me. I must say that love, for all its splendor and glee, can be quite the powerful anchor dragging you to the bottom of the sea. – Hey, that rhymes.
I digress; (shaking my head too) I know this is a sappy and trite piece of melodramatic high school longing. A self-serving, muddling, whining, diatribe without any purpose other than to try and steel myself against the nothing that will happen. I know nothing will happen. I’m pretty sure nothing will happen. But it’s a hard thing to get out of the mind without actually putting the metaphorical “pen to paper” and allowing the release of thought to carry on.
I’ll be fine. I’ll wipe the tear from the corner of my eye and carry on. I have no choice in the matter. A love lost is truly that, lost. For all time. And no matter how hard we wish to go back and bathe in it, reality just doesn’t allow it. Time only moves forward, it’s the constant in nature. There is no going back.
There is only forward and I should look to that future with a happier lilt. It’s a fool who wallows in his shortcomings and doesn’t look up from the puddle of self-contempt to see that the Sun is shining and birds are singing and this heartache will cool with time. I only wish I knew how long because it’s kind of a drag. Seriously, a drag. One day though, I might actually be over it and then, look out Ladies. I'll be the proper gentleman of your dreams.
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