Of Hope and Misgivings

Blinking dots stole, one day,

the ticking hands,

when we weren’t watching.

Your body curled around

my limp spirit, legs wrapping

this throbbing body, chained

to swirling thoughts of itself.

The silence of emotions slipped

quickly through the narrow crack

in the window, quietly mixing

with the smoke lingering around

the lonely eavesdroppers outside.

But a few miles separate

my new family

(that easily-disposable product

bought so easily

with the currency of love)

from the one I sold just months ago.

Time cannot be told with limp hands;

years had already passed

between us. An ageing child

now lay weeping in my arms, the sweat

clamping her spirit to my mind. Her mind

ignoring the wails for shores

left long ago.

Glance to my left – blinking

lights, smoky nights, neon

kites of guilty pleasure

sailing above sinning bodies –

shut my eyes – plunge –

deep breath – breathe.

I see now: seven lives, seven

voices, seven years swim against visions that brought us

here and now, cursed

until we find the welcome touch of arms

that belong to spectres from lives lived long

ago, shores previously found,

never again

to be within reach of these limp hands,

these arms, lost, stolen,

sold, given, taken, asked for

by so many; lost to the magic

of promises, promises of magic –

those gifted by, owed to, forgotten

mothers and fathers, fathers

and brothers, and sisters and mothers, since locked

behind clocks made by hands

feeding off sin.

Your eyes pleaded

now, a vacuum was born,

an unending vortex, a ghost,

spectre, a vision from childhood,

an emptiness that haunts without

wanting to do so, a child’s

bedtime tale, the tragic inevitability

of never growing up. These pleading

mirrors are a curse

of wisdom but you look through it all.

I was a boy,

she a girl,

the world awoke

but she stayed

another night.