Until The Next
The feeling of being afloat, unable to grasp
and understand what’s going on (to know),
The skirting of possibilities fluttering and
fluttering, never resting, until
I couldn’t know anymore
where I was going but I had a feeling,
a close inhale of love,
like breathing in the fragrance of a flower
that hadn’t fully bloomed and never will,
because we allowed it to die, and maybe
the air just wasn’t right.
My life could not give it life.
But I tasted the closeness of it,
the possibility of it, just enough
to stay afloat, frozen in desire,
never satiating what began to entice me,
into this dance of going nowhere.
Do you know the unbearable anguish of
closeness to death, closeness
to love fully formed,
to end a search that began in vain.
But can I just—one second of—pleas—
The more you try, the greater the pain,
the more you want to know—do you love me?
Ah, to even finish the question gives me a sense
of satisfaction I could not receive in this
experience of almost loving someone
and not being able to,
because the door wouldn’t open, or maybe it
couldn’t close.
The lock wasn’t there, a key needed
that I didn’t have,
so did I go through or did I just let it slip.
Try again and again.
A looser grip to none at all,
an illusion of possibility of even taking the step
to open what could not be there—for me,
for now,
like the timeline had jumped and I’m caught
somewhere
in the middle, still searching to see the end
of the one that’s already leaving.
I’ll never know what could have possibly been.
I felt it all; it lingers with me,
a cord attached to the past. I was there,
I was there, I tell myself. I was close enough
to care and it stays with me, like my ego
latching on,
having to live with spirit while in search
of separate direction, another place to go.
To know, or not know,
to love you and not love you.
A paradox I’ve created;
chosen to live inside of.
Until the next world I enter
allows me to forget this last.
Until the next world,
can overcome what’s passed.
