Two Lives to Live

The hole you left is wider than the constellation’s bearings

I’ve tried to fill it with sand, weather, wind, and moonbeams

They keep running out just as I try desperately to forget

The only puzzle piece is broken and cannot be replaced

 

Skipping stones make ripples that leave impressions on the shore

When the stone is gone you still feel the ripples pass you by

God dropped a boulder in my stream that still remains

It emptied me and left floods of water on the shores of my heart

 

The books you never read to me sit dusty on the shelf

Movies never watched, scripts never enacted to entertain the masses

Children will come and go, winter, summer, spring will pass

New dresses you’ll never wear hang on the racks as lovely as unseen roses

 

Words you’ll never write to exhilarate your mind, curses you’ll never speak

Will flow freely from my hands, my lips, that I might give you a voice

I will breathe for both of us, live as brightly and as warmly as the Sun

And love so greatly that all will know I love for more than one

 

You are as cold as a crystal, whiter than a pearl, but I remember your legs

Your shoes, your hair, your mermaid that smiled from her rock

A shelter over all my dreams and a terror to my nightmares

A shadow on the heat of my face and a pink flower in my garden

 

In all my dancing there will still be enough for you to have danced

I’ll sing twice as many arias, in alto and soprano, to the audience

I hear your favorite hymn; I stand in church and in silence I remember

How one day you decided to fly, to dance, to float into my dreams