The Gift

This poem only available on Lush Stories

There is so little time.
I lie here, staring out of the window
At the stars,
As they twinkle their ambivalent gaze back at me.
And I think of you.

These tears slide, first hotly as they leave me,
And then coldly like a river of mercury down my cheek
In this starlight and candlelight.
They speak of what would have,
Could have,
Might have been.

But never will.

You never saw me.
Not really.
You saw my photograph
And smiled warmly,
And perhaps stroked the screen with gentle fingers.

That same gentleness kissed my soul as
Those kindly fingers pushed the keys
And tapped out your thoughtful, brave encouragement.
You saw beyond my shell,
Beyond my fears,
Beyond my clumsy phrases and inelegant words.

You saw beyond the virgin-who-is-not-a-virgin,
Beyond the disbelief that she could write
So boldy of things she knew not,
And yet so tentatively of things she did.

You laughed at my clumsy attempts to understand
What makes sexy, how to be sexy,
How to pretend to feel sexy.
And it didn't matter to you,
Because you saw Me.

In a place suffused with
Lusty desires and wet, slick naked skin;
In this world of fantasy and shared
Dreams of abandon and
Imagined hook-ups and fuck-ups
All swirling together and grinding together,
You held onto my hand and gently smiled,
Calling me in and granting me a corner
From which I could observe and learn
And grow into the woman I ought to have been.

But you saw her.
You knew her.
You looked at me and saw her.
The potential I have lived these years with
Was already manifest in your heart,
And your eyes viewed me with kindly blindness
To the state this life left my body in.

You saw beyond the ugly,
Beyond the broken, mutilated shell
And fragmented mind;
You saw the woman I could have been
As if she Was.
As if she wasn't just this frayed remnant
Of torn dreams and silly fairy tales;
As if she existed in reality and
Not in my pathetic fantasy.

You saw the beauty of the raiments
That my soul wishes it was swathed in;
The shine of the morning dew on this heart
That wished away the monsters of the past;
The warmth of the afternoon sun
In the beauteous smile as I gaze on
A lover's sleeping face.

And as this midnight approaches me,
Ready to envelop me and take me away,
I shall carry your lovely kindness
As my lamp,
And enter that velvet eternity
With the promise of what would have,
Could have,
Might have been.

As if it was.

This poem only available on Lush Stories