Through the looking glass

Through the rain, the sound of ending

Despite this, I am closer now, to remembering

Every sharpened affection, how it took every bit

Left nothing in its place

I am closer through the looking glass

Sounds of a hundred regrets

Of each time and then

Of you taking me by the neck

Laying down in our abyss

This

I am still closer now to this

Though it has been figurative years

Lifetimes and burials

Lost in the neglect that comes

When you have always seen in the other’s eyes

Such a deep thing of enduring

As if it were swept out by a big brush now it is gone

It was a error to believe that look was love

Wanting to fit a jigsaw piece but you did not

Once they knew that, the need for you

Snuffed out

And the ship carrying your heart

Saw no lighthouse and floundered on rocks

And you with less than you ever had

Sunk like a exhaled regret

Like an exile without tether

Down into the drowning of your grief

As thick and peerless as anybody could be

Without air and succor

No hand reaching through water

No one there, perhaps they never were

Now it is definite, it is legal, it is provable

Gone, as if not once was any of it true

And the lies you told yourself

And the hope you carried

Sinks with you

Where you have no more words

Where nothing is nothing

Without that sustaining strength

And the rain is inside you, not exterior

You are the girl crying in public places

You are the woman watching emptiness drive away

You are years down the road alone

You are forgotten and yes .. you wanted something whole

It broke into pieces too smashed to remold

So long ago you don’t know where you put the parts

Perhaps they stab you now like thorns in weeping dark

But you’ll never trust again, not one word, not one action

You’ve walled yourself off, in an ocean of your own

Set on repeat to drown, every time you wake up

Every morning it comes around

The pain

Excruciating and long

Eternity and punishment

For ever believing

For ever letting yourself believe

What they felt was the same

Because it wasn’t, it couldn’t have been

They still inhabit the land of the living

And really you should have known that

A very very long time ago

When you were both younger and smooth of melancholy

A sense the promise was too sweetly said

Fast in utterance, not enough breadth

Like puffing up your cheeks and letting go your breath

Is no more than rushing air, warm from your mouth

And your eyes, I should have examined closer

They did not blink and I thought this meant truth

When a lie can wear

The very same outfit