Friendship

Our friendship can survive the test of years
By only asking of it what I'll give.
Make no promises and none can be broken.
Only give what you would receive,
Ask nothing you doubt I'd give you.

If no one tries to scale or break them,
We can ignore the walls.
If you don't try to climb over them
And I guard my speech with gilded tongue,
None will trespass -- if we don't look
For each others weaknesses and flaws
We can force ourselves to pretend.

Untitled

Their hands grope within darkness
As shadows conceal;
Faces burn with quiet shame
As passions congeal.

Hands reach slowly for the light,
Bodies hide away --
Fear shatters the twinned embrace
As light brings forth day.

Walls rise between shared feelings
-- Two bitter smiles then --
Eyes saying what words dare not:
"We will meet again."

Falling Into Another

The first word I pronounced was -- your name.
So frail a thing, seemingly too simple
To bridge the gaps it does, the loneliness.
I needed you as a friend, each smile warming me;
A welcome I have done so little to deserve.
I could pull myself together and say I love you
But those words are too easy to say
And mean too much to be said so casually.
In order to be able to fall into love
You must believe you are worth being loved.
I only know that I care for you
So much that it frightens me sometimes.
If love is willing to surrender to you, I am.
If love is finding someone who needs you
As much as you need them, I can.
If love means just being friends, I will.
I only know that every moment I spend alone
I wish I could share with you.
I only know that if this is what love is
I wish I'd met you long ago.

A Love

Eyes close, false windows to the soul.
Lips and hands meet
As we touch, bridging the gaps.
Words whisper lies, but hands speak truth.
You reach for me as I to you:
Darkness invaded by a touch, a caress,
In the shadows no one is false.

Conversations

Knives pound into the brain,
Needles stab into the heart:
You speak, and words rush out
Seeking their pound of flesh.

I reach for my own weapons --
Sarcasm, humour, wit:
Ripostes stabbing back into you,
I will your heart to bleed.

Love Lost

I wait now, surrounded by silence,
Looking for the pause between breaths;
Desperate to understand, in words left behind
Or half spoken: silent gestures
My only clues.
I listen for the spaces that lie between
Saying and meaning, motion and confusion.

Perhaps you thought I replaced meaning with words
When I said I loved you.
I should have seen the hints in your hesitancy,
The recalled touch, that too long stare.

You told me I knew you better than anyone:
It was because of that I didn't see as deeply as I could.
Even though it's now too late
I'm listening to you and not to love
Or who I thought you were.

Words

We only have one word for sorry
But I don't think its enough.
You loved me once, perhaps as much
As I thought I loved you:
I saw the signs but can ignore
As well as I can see.

There is none so blind as the foolish ones
Who pluck out their own eyes.

I thought that love would see us through,
That faith would be enough.
Yours was weaker (or mine too deep):
You saw that it would end.

I'm jealous that you saw that truth,
I hate you for breaking us up.
Only now do I see that I always
Hated you as I loved you
In equal measure.

Second Falling

We who met in darkness now meet in light.
Sad, but true; and painful, like all truths.
Your friends told you not to meet me here
(You told me that much later) and mine the same:
Both of us told we were too good for each other.
Why is it that when you break up
You're told about the other fish in the sea?

"If you love someone, let them go ... "
T-shirt wisdom. My fear:
That another net would find you,
Entangle you, refuse to let you go.

No one understood that you were my fish,
Possession only in the way the left arm
Can be said to possess the right, by being part of it.
You were right for me, and I like to think
That sometimes I knew that, that it scared me.
I'd like to be able to blame love for us breaking up.

When everyone told me about your faults,
When they told me they'd "seen it coming"
All I could think of was your smiles, the laughs shared,
The walks under the sun and other stars, our friendship.
I think I knew then that you were the one I wanted.
I think now that to gain things worth having
You must lose them to appreciate them.