Old poem

[mcgreeniepants]

I found this buried in my computer. I wrote it for a writing class I took years ago. It's weird. So I'm posting it.

I don't labor under the illusion that I'm any good at poetry. Might as well post it though, cause it's not being put to any other use in my world!

You never open your eyes
when I pretend to touch you.
You catch your breath and shiver
when you are all alone in your room
and I press my faded hands through
the soft freckles I once so loved to touch.

I watch you rise
with the color on your face,
shy skin trying desperately
to match your hair.
Tears of remembrance
trace cheeks a duller pale
than memory illustrates-
and you call out for me,
though there is nothing there to hear
but your own loneliness.

But you think perhaps that
these rules can be broken and that
I too will risk everything,
I will come to you,
because it's you-
and it's worth it to see you shiver,
your hair spread out dark red like blood on your pillow as
I let my fingertips drift
just underneath your skin
right where I know it made your body arch,
and you cry out softly into the night
while I breathe imagined breath against your sleeping lips.

And when your breath evens
and you slide once again into rest,
I close my eyes and hold my arms in
a circle as if they were
wrapped tightly around you, and whisper
sweet promises into your ear
as if you might remember them
the next day, while your heart
aches with unmade wishes.

And you open your eyes
in the grey light of dawn to find
that the pale shadows of morning
make desperate fools of truth.