Armistice Bells

 

Stay well for me, my love.

Like when our ancestors went

to war or searched new homes

on distant shores; their lovers

waited for them, clasping

folded letters in folded hands.

Letters that traveled through

time to reach out, so are my

thoughts stretching limits,

to find you. As they waited;

I, too, wait for you, now.

 

Your hands feel as distant as a

memory of a field I explored

as a young woman; your breath

as close as my own heartbeat.

Your love, a sanctuary whose

confines I long to visit on these

long nights, alone. Your body

is an altar I need to sacrifice

myself upon again, and soon. Your

kiss, a cascade of hope

in a dry land, your arms, a way

to lose myself unmasked,

 

without a curfew. I will hold you

until the morning church bells

ring to mourn the dead and guide

the lost and fearful; I am maybe

among them but it is not even

my own death I fear. It is that we

did not know that last time would

be last for so very long. I wait in

my home, you in yours; we wait

for a new kind of armistice, for

the silence of alarm bells; we wait

for the smoke to rise. A new era,

could we find, a new way to

accept love, after so much

was done to separate us? 

Reviews

[Travis Gibson (poetic h..]

The true essence of longing lives within this piece. Wonderful!

[Chris]

The feeling of a prayer is in this one - least to me.

[Glen Yumang Manese]

I like how this carries through the whole narrative in your lines...in depth as if the person is you...going in motion with the descriptions...as the entirety plays out in lines...all the way to the end...