假如能够回到往日时光
oh, the human heart and how it hungers
for the acquired taste of butterfly kisses and exit wounds.
i swirl my wine right up close to the rim of my glass
and nod along to some old song
about years that pass
and faces that change.
there is a deep and insensible desire for
a familiar person,
someone to skip stones along my surface
in a rhythm i recognise,
to hum at the resonance frequency of my empty room.
you and me, beneath a fig tree; you know
how it goes. the further back you trace the branches,
the less i have to explain.
you see, i want to be moved
the way i was in act one, back when
a handshake, a first glance
foreshadowed something grand. i want
to be held in terrible transparency with the wine
still in my mouth.
i am so greedy, i know, and so awfully afraid
of what to do in the space between the low and high tides.
to build
or not to build?
does the sand in the sea still remember
all its brilliant forms?
yes, there is something to be said about the loneliness
that comes with anything new.
if you chip away at the marble, you might reveal
the figure hidden inside. michelangelo,
or someone or other with a romantic sense i envy.
sometimes you just chip away at the marble
until one day you find
you have nothing left. you can't go back
to act one with marble, either.
there is a point to all of this, i promise,
i am just not brave enough to say it. i suppose,
really, it's just about how
you can't make old friends,
you can only lose them.