Steps down an absent stare

Let's do it

You brush my arm and I retroactively

retrospect

the whole respect scenario and take myself back

in a flash it all progresses backwards to coalesce into the couch mauve or maroon

somewhere lost somewhere between and I remember

the islands a part

looking anxiously heartbeats skipping faster like an old record on a track

but surprising the obvious feelings

We didn't have to go any further

I would always remember

two fingers brushed on one side of my arm

months later

feeling those overwhelming fingers letting go

moving and moving on

two things I have to do but don't want to,

at least-scared to anyway

-there and my heart aches a little,

now, more than anything I can put silly ideas of relationship

on hold

Finally, I know I'm not ready for one, a realization just a little too late

pushed too hard for the wrong reasons

now it hurts, reconnecting

burned bridges, held together with lime green fabrics that twist

concerns expressed

taking it into account that I'm a lonely guy and how it relates to how I'm feeling.

You ask me how I am consistently,

mistake mis-gestures for flirting again

and it stirs up the pot

for burnings hot

that boil oil on a floor and I remember your descriptions

and how things didn't work and we're dining at shari's and I want you to keep looking at me

wondering if it was like what it was before

and overthinking the good times where it twists to fit your body

and I'm a body looking at somebody with sun tan lotion and I bashfully withdraw

humming and hawing instead of gawking

wanting

must be catholic enough to deny it or

is it about control?

you ask me these things like are you a tease, are you average, and tell me how good looking I am and if I'm going to sleep in my room and I feel like asking you to come with me and I know I shouldn't. So I don't. One friend socks me in the arm and says rekindle and the other he says to dwindle and no romantic sayings listening to sweet, sweet jazz silent listening and reminiscing quietly

Or is it more like how I first said it and really thinking about it,

let's be young

let's be friends

let's be single

let's hold hands

let's cook dinner

let's cuddle

let's dance

let's kiss

let's pretend

let's do nothing

let's walk everywhere

let's lose shoes

let's go to Oregon

let's have eggplant

let's talk soon

now it hurts for no reason at all and I've got too much on my mind and not enough time

to sort commingle bins of commingling because a lease is ending

and a century is turning

like the wheels in my mind spinning around like rims on a car that I don't have

it doesn't have to be saab or sad

but for some weird reason there's a cage tempered with age

You said that you overdramatically broke my heart

and I think no you didn't, just a piece of it

and the mettle muddles into grit the things to medal, denial again

to grin

grimacing between teeth hiding bone and miles of where is home and what's my own.

She brought me back and back again standing on the edge of a lost field pulling back and I can see the edge and I want to be saved, and then save again. It's all tiring this super hero work and even they get bested.

Calm down and breathe.

Stand there and get hugged.

Reviews

[Fairy Willow]

Very good write. A lot to take in, yet does not detract from the poem bt hand. Intellectually written. Well worded and expressed.