I will refrain from my need to clothe you and your soul with my words: we do our own catharsis everyday. For you, instead, are someone else's words, mirroring much of mine. Happy Anniversary, Da.
For Him
By Merrit Malloy
He's asleep now,
Enclosed in the only freedom he knows,
An unconscious sanctuary
That unites one day with the next,
The fragile province of a mind that has so little shelter.
And I love him so,
I did not mean to come this far.
I've learned to love,
The sound of him calling my name,
Waking to the feeling
Of his body against mine.
He is so familiar to me,
His arms are like my home.
Still...I love him enough
To leave him alone.
Tonight, we tried to say it out loud.
But the words seemed to hit upon our faces
Like small stones.
Feelings, unedited,
Ran underground in us.
Our eyes became transparent
And we were afraid.
The terror or maybe not
Being together anymore
Carried it’s own justification.
I did not mean to contaminate his life
With my own confusion,
To allow his need for me
To encourage the collective myths
Little girls are fed for breakfast
I did not unite with him
So that he must divide himself.
He only meant to love me,
He did not mean to come this far.
I believed in Cinderella,
I even looked for magic dragons in my Nana’s yard.
I grew up believing.
He grew up trying not to.
And we’ve lived long enough to know that
As much as I had been deformed by fantasy
He had been mutilated by reality.
We can translate our silence now,
We know what it means.
Feelings that we kept sealed
And beyond each other’s reach
Are threatening,
But defined and honest.
We don’t know yet
What parts we’ll play in one another’s life,
But we’ve come a long way together
Trying to find out.
Together or alone,
The decisions are beginning to reverberate,
Like noise, ripening.
Our appetites were formed
Before we knew what we needed,
And our experience together is a prism
Through which we see everything differently now.
But are we truly different?
Did we escape the pollution
Of public opinion against the
Cultivation of "forever"?
Do we have enough respect and trust
In one another?
And in ourselves?
Do we have enough life to exchange,
Enough love to pay for what we want?
We do love each other so...
But we did not mean to go this far.
