Poem – “Don’t Leave Me Here” – 1/21/2023

Dragged along on pavement,
stitched together in dust.
What loosens, other than all these
repeating phases, born to bloom, again,
from fitful seeds?

We never kissed, just as we
never grew this vacant empire.
We found each other foraging scenes,
bled into identical desertion.
I want to keep crawling
up to you, and never keep myself
wondering about you.

I no longer want to
see, with whitened eyes,
hearing a faint heartbeat within
a throat that has collapsed,
from a chest that had been left
open, with folded memories.

I no longer want to be withdrawn,
like curtains, into entanglement,

I no longer want to see sunsets
embrace that dust, to be removed
with this tragic uncertainty
to bloom, again.

Phases of a moon.
Faces that deceive through
strangled tongues. To changes,
among seasons, in falsehoods
of expression,
where all that falls, like leaves,
is a pair of crippled knees.

All that has come up
are hope’s thinnest rays,
held in a pair of decaying arms.