Unrequited

I.

I am living now In the realm of feeling. I have abandoned sense and reason, The external world of making and doing. I am no longer balancing on the edge of a razor. I have gone overboard. I have dipped my toe into the ocean – A dangerous place – And now I am drowning in it.

II.

As painful as this is, At least I am comforted by this thought: That I am practicing how to love.

Amidst the pain and the longing, I am loving. Loving so much it hurts. I do not suffer from hatred, resentment, anger, contempt, regret, But my heart is torn apart, Overflowing, Boiling over, With love.

III.

I need the caresses of trees The humid, intimate smell of bark Like I need your hands.

I need the sweet immensity of the sea Like I need your mouth, your tongue.

I have not yet found all the ways to touch you.

IV. What do I do with this love that pours out of me? How do I make use of it? Where does it go? What is its purpose?

If this yearning could be alchemized into a jewel, or gold that I could offer you. A thing, an object, a gift. Made into symbol. Made physical, visual, externalized.

Instead of running rampant through my blood, crashing waves in my skin, battering against my organs. An inward assault, invisible to the eye.

Conversations must go on as before. The daily routine must continue. The banalities, the cliché’s, the appearances. All while music bursts forth from the heart and gods rage from the inside.

V. It leaves no trace

This intensity of love

The waves of emotion

The obsessive thoughts

The nights of turmoil.

Unless I record them here

They will die with me. VI. And so it happens again. I enclose my suffering in a tiny box so it will not leak, or seep, or drown me in my bed. No good will come of it. It must stay buried, private, this heavy little burden, not to pollute the daylight hours. A pin embedded in my sternum or a drop of dread dripping into my center. It contains images: the back of your neck, the breadth of your chest, the details of your pale fingers, a ring. And sound - oh, your voice. Its timbre destroys, shatters, buries me in a pit. I feel the anchor pulling me down, descending to the seabed. No good will come of it - the thoughts must be enveloped, pruned, stripped at their base, withered before they become swollen with desire, or blossom into fantasy. These minuscule hopes - of touch, of skin, of breath on breath. They have no substance, they float away, whispered, evaporating into nothingness. Yet they are soaked in pain, and to the body they are real. When my eyes caress your face, the body crumples and twists. The spine aches. I suffer. How I suffer. VII. Your Body In its suit blue, grey, black, brown it is just a thing. Like a chair or a desk. A piece of furniture. Neutral. naked, it is a new species sweet savage, gentle barbarian made up of pieces earlobes, fingers, knees, eyelashes is it the thickness of the neck breadth of the chest that churns me with rapture let me melt your pieces into something new molding your skin into electric moons carving your wooden heart, dry and fractured smoothing your jaggedness sculpting your rawness into a silky nectar mellow and pulsing your body caressed rubbed one thousand times like a stone becomes a glistening seal who dives into the aqua broth of my seas your restless thumbs doves of delight with frail feathers perch and fidget white nomads hopping from limb to limb your moles, targets for my tongue scattered in damp ravines linger and wait to be devoured your hallowed form a pale forest, forbidden I sing its peaks and crevices with my thirsty mouth gaping with fire

your clothes lock you away imprison your skin from mine straight-jacket your soul which glints through chasms of eyes like fevered stars sweat glistens above lips raindrops collect on tight and tender leaves dripping lushly with salt let me wash you new your chest cages the throbbing heart primitive organ merciless magnet center of my craving how many years will it beat will it await my touch victim to my yearning before its final cadence VIII. In my dream you touched me grasped my hand grabbed my waist from behind, playfully holding me in a brief embrace your love revealed abruptly through your body through its limbs I awoke in fever joy-trembling anticipating knowing something would happen between us the love is there only a matter of time

An impassable bridge

between dream and our waking world

our reality

of insistently not touching each other

the formality of speech

our structured habits

skirting, never crossing the boundary

my hand not caressing your shoulder

your palm evading the small of my back--

its true home

your skin avoiding mine

I want to love you

like I love the song

pleading for it not to end

the music, the love making

let me hear it

hear your voice cry its melody

again and again

and again IX. After Our Encounter

I am rubbed raw

bleeding from small cuts

A limp onion, grey and shredded,

stinging sour.

I harbor dark thoughts.

Throbbing, battered,

my bruised organs gasp for breath.

The heart, self-pitying,

feels despised as the fitful black fly,

consumed, chewed up

discarded detritus—

a banana peel,

spotted, decaying, sorry for itself,

eluded as the road-killed creature,

a lump of fur amidst blood-smeared asphalt.

This is my heart.

Soaked in sorrow, an abused hound, shivering with swollen eyes.

It was filled with passion, but without receptacle,

lacking a vessel in which to pour its ardor.

It needs to burst in your presence,

but can only deflate or harden itself, calloused.

It gulps and flails – a naked fledgling, all skin and beak.

I wear red, but your eyes avoid mine.

I cradle my wound as an infant, wet and whimpering.

It’s all that remains. X. Just when I thought the heart was dead you came to me in dream: on a merchant vessel, below deck crowded, dense with acquaintances we rocked together for a few moments it was acceptable for our bodies to touch, for my hips to lock with yours for our knees to entangle for me to hold your sides tracing your belt buckle with my fingers for you to grasp my arms, enfolding my form, for our cheeks to approach caress eyes held closed briefly almost embracing to breathe each other in and to know love breathed with us present and pulsing like a child held between our limbs before we were pulled away by the rocking before anyone suspected I awoke suddenly damp with the humidity of this closeness my mind grasped at the intimacy tried desperately to cling to it but it withdrew, faded, splintering in pieces the dream slickened, edged with rubber, and was swept away with the tide washed away through the open fingers of my mind leaving me red and sobbing inside the heart rekindled, enflamed, burning in the night. XI. Why is it

when the heart is wide enough

to love child after child

son after daughter after son

enfolded in its fleshly embrace

must the heart love only one man?

We know this is a lie.

This organ of flame

this throbbing creature

of claw and blood

Must we put it in a cage

in a box

with right angles

sharp corners

must we clip it

trim it like a hedge

bridle and saddle it

admonish it

like a petulant child

it is no tame beast—

like a lion on a leash

only a matter of time

before it breaks free

runs wild

takes flight

before it turns its fangs

on its master XII. In dream, you took me by the hand laid me on the bed your face hovered, a flickering candle your eyes fell into mine You live in my throat, you reside in my skin my hands cannot tame your voice I force my arms to my side lest they reach out in caress

When will the horror of this loving cease

At what age will the heart abandon its quest

When will the haze of passion lift

Will this day be my last

I shiver for you. I quiver for you.

Why has your face

been branded on my heart?

I covet, I covet, God forgive me. XIII. I lusted in a dresser drawer I loved you in a closet My longing packed in Tupperware Rubber-banded, in reposit Beneath my bed I keep my love Held hostage, tied and gagged In a shoebox, stashed and safe neatly labeled, marked and tagged

Despite my efforts, one day I fear confined, it will shout or bang or perish from lack of breath or sun burst free, roam like a wild thing with fangs XIV. Like a rebellious bird, they sometimes say, a slippery fish, a lion on a leash, a flaming fox, entrapped, who pines away, a moaning bear in chains no law can teach. The reins of marriage cannot bind its will. No tidy fence, no pasture appease its thirst for wilderness—cragged rock from jutting hill, the bleak ache of desert, savage cloudburst. No other love must be tamed like this— our tenderness for children sown like seeds, friendships sprouting ferns, wet with dew and bliss, but love for men, outside planted rows, are weeds. It cannot be trained by words, by habit. Love is no sweet and docile rabbit. So let me wrap it in a cardboard box all taped with ribbons and tied with bows, this organ of fire, throbbing thing that knocks and cries, creature of claw and blood that flows. Should I juice it like an orange? Boil it down like honey, or like jam? Keep it in a cage where it belongs, but squeeze it flat and brown, distill for you its passion and its rage? Uncivilized, it abides by no laws. Must I clip it, trim it like a hedge grown wild? Bridle and saddle it, muzzle its jaws, admonish it like a petulant child? A rough and ancient beast, it withers in chains or rebels, turns on its master, bares its fangs. XV. Love, you are of the body, yet beyond form expressed through skin through tongue through honey and salt You are the breath that startles the trees brightens the birds bows the grass in supplication

What other living thing craves like this? Does the green plant yearn? The silver birch ache? Does the flower crave the bee? Is the swallow shattered by desire?

My missing half--

You are meat and candlewax You are wine and melody You are sunset and daggers I am only one woman I am a many faceted Madonna I could love you well I could love you with wet irises with hot oceans with the blue weeping bells of wisteria for you, I am a perspiring plum won’t you consume me with teeth and tongue

Just give me one day when I can touch you when river bursts forth from rock when the gates of reason part their iron lips when the moon puts to rest its icy hurt

I am made of skin, of bone, bark, muscle, of pine needles, ash, fat, hair, dust I am of the earth yet my heart is a monstrous creature a ravenous Charybdis who belongs to the torrid seas

I crumble like soil, damp and weak but the love that inhabits me that enmeshes in my form has the force of forty seas My body tires of its tides Do I want peace? Like the sailor, nearly drowned who longs for land but once on solid ground yearns once more for the waves The sea calls to me you cannot keep me from it

At my last breath

Will I see them paraded before me

the bodies of the men I have loved

their faces, their eyes

the men I have touched

and the ones I have not

as clear to me as the river’s silken eye

No one will love my old body

yet even dry and withered

I refuse to let the fire die

I won’t be satisfied with ash or embers

with the compromises of age

I will keep it fanned and burning

until the end of days

until it singes me, until my bones smolder

until I perish in flame