Alone Is The Loudest Sound
and it’s always on in the background
This inability to talk to you Levels me Flattens me in my tracks LIke a squirrel crossing the road that never had a chance It’s just that it is So much It is all so much more difficult More so than I ever could have imagined And “quite the imagination that boy has” may as well have been my middle name A terror takes hold where a moment seems an inescapable loop A broken downward spiral Full of sharp, protruding things Lacerating flesh and mind as I sink The untold gems and throwaway jokes The kinds that write themselves throughout an average day in the life Offering opportunity for an abrupt guffaw Open jawed and laced with tears of laughter Or a wince and an accompanying eye roll Behind which lays the same gladness at familiarity The same expression of love All the plots and all the plot holes of all the movies we won’t watch Side by side and hand on thigh Sharing a small salty popcorn and a large diet coke Barely lit by the glow of the small screen in our favorite indie theater The one that helped a new city home feel like a home All the songs that’ll never again make us move Cause us to find each one in the other’s arms Implored by sound to sway gently Cheek to cheek and breast to breast In all the romance of a well lit kitchen When I think of all the fears I might have conjured but didn't And how all that might have taken a dangerous foothold Become an impediment Selfish somethings in the way of service Caused hesitation in devotion to the mission Which was always and is still Both your’s and my own and our’s It appears now I was gifted a mercy A needle plunged on two as we counted to three Medicine delivered before any thought to recoil Not from the pain of any one moment itself But the fear of pain yet to come There are moments too where I notice the silence carries abundance When a bird’s song has just cut through And I hear just the bird Smell just the wildflowers See their yellow and purple and green undulating landscape Feel just my footsteps in the dirt Bathe in the coolness of just this breeze Sense the warmth of this single ray of sunlight Energy sent approximately eight minutes twenty seconds ago Special delivered to me When a smile becomes itself on my face And I am loving you here and now When I find myself sitting in the deep twin sadnesses Never again and no longer the same I shudder Grateful for a lack of imagination Thankful for the separation of self and truth For the refuge of selflessness and loving-awareness Knowing to remain open in this impossible but somehow bearable Oppressive and transient Crushing and constructive Loudness of alone
The last stanza.... 💖
While it doesn't lessen the loss and the grief, you are not alone and you are and always will be loved . . . not by the one you want, nevertheless . . . loved . . .