Words

Words

Scribbled on a page

Hastily

Breathlessly

Desperately…

Descriptors of someone’s innermost longings

Dreams his heart dares express only

In the quiet shadows of evening

When all other souls are asleep.

Heart aching for heart

Flesh aching for flesh

Soul pining for soul.

Words

Leaping from the very page in which they’ve been etched

To pierce through the skin

In the center of my chest

And seep into my heart
Like a powerful drug.

Medicine or poison?

I cannot decide.

Who can know the effect one’s words might have

Once they’ve left the page

To meet the eye

And affect the mind

And break the heart?

Who knew the sound?

The silent sound this heart would make

When the perfect words infiltrated

And took over everything?

Such martial law was never meant to exist inside one’s soul

The very words which draw me in

Draw me closer

Are the very words that have me instinctually backing away

Breaking contact

Severing ties

Because such words were never meant for me.

They weren’t designed to invade my heart…

No…they were never meant for me.

What was I then?

What have I always been?

An innocent bystander to the battles you fight with yourself

A casualty of the war waging within you

And without me.

A war captured within the framework of your words

Those words which illustrate

The very darkness you retreat to

The very madness which engulfs you

And yet does not overtake you.

The verge on which you teeter – maintaining such a baffling balance

Between real and unreal

Sane and insane

Dark and light.

Those words you ascribe to the light you search for

The only light that can fill the empty spaces

That she left

That they all left

The empty spaces nobody deserves – least of all you…

You know the light so intimately

That you describe the warmth of its beam the instant

It touches my face.

And as you penned the shape and temperature and texture of

That single tear of joy

It was there – sliding down my cheek.

Words too beautiful

Too potent

To exist at all

Are the words that slice like a blade

Because they are not mine to live up to.

They are not mine to achieve.

They are not mine.

And they never needed to be – they were just too beautiful to go untouched

And I, like a child, reach out to touch what I know I shouldn’t

What I know is forbidden to me

Like the apple in the garden…

Just one touch, just to see what it might feel like

To have such beautiful words ascribed to me.

And now here I sit

Scribbling the words

Hastily

Breathlessly

Desperately…

And I wonder if these words should ever pierce another’s skin

And seep into someone else’s heart –

– The sweetest poison –

As such words have into mine.