I Saw You

How do I write these words?
To say I’ve loved you all the years-
I’d given up here
On verse, on expression,
On believing my words could make an impression
On the once malleable rock of souls
The intractable solidity
Of human goals and ambition-
Such a dirty word to my cognition.

So we are what we are-
We will be what we will be-
And I withdrew the poetic parts of me
From the temple of the obscene.
I found a different dream,
A broken altar on which
To break my bones,
To spill my blood, my sweat, my years,
Something tangible for which
To live, to die, to fight, or resign:
A wall on which to stand
Taunting to be shot down
By all those who secretly snipe me now.

I grew tired of mankind,
My brotherhood,
The endless repetition
Of proclaiming with bold assertion
Misunderstood lies,
And self-justification wrapped in judgmental demands,
Proclaiming to understand,
But not seeing a soul,
I grew tired of the whole of mankind,
And somehow more willing to die for the parts,
Willing to say goodbye.

What audacity to say I’ve loved you.
We knew each other such a brief intersection,
Who could say any deep connection exists
Beyond wishes and fantasy-
The archetypes of my mentality
Painted over the frailties of your humanity
Who can say any reality thrives in the insanity of absences and adherences?
And Love must be reality,
Else it is a horror.

Yet I’ve loved you,
For whatever you’ve become,
However you began,
What small moments changed the sway of your rhythm,
By even a half-measure,
Your victories and failures,
Unseen and adored
Known the less, loved the more
Your villainous possibilities,
Or your greatest potential,
Pale in comparison
To the space we occupied
At the same time.

Some spark of time that never faded,
Some ember falling into ash,
But burning evermore.
And by the flickering light,
I saw you.
I saw you cared; I saw you hid.
I saw all you never did,
But would one day.
I gave my heart to you unrestrained,
But locked the rest away,
Because I loved you too much
To risk your days.

I never caught a spark, a token,
A look, a word, a hope
To assume you saw me too.
I never would have presumed,
But I saw you
And it burns alive forevermore.

So ready to fall upon my altar,
So ready to break my back
But I fell asleep, sick again last night,
And you arrived.
Another dream of you,
Through the years they follow me,
You showed me shattered things
Don’t always feel-
Compressed, contained, and cold
They wait
In a frozen state to process
All the stimuli they experience-

I awake- did I wait
For another dream?
Are there things still yet to feel?
To experience? To process? To pen?
Shall I open another cistern of soul-
Care for the whole, invest in the parts?
Shall I start to feel and try again?
And if I do, will you find me
In dream again so
Once more
I might see you.