My nostalgic heart demands that I be verbose, take my time,
Make of my pain a museum, and wander its halls, seeking…?
Ah yes, these yellowed letters in the attic,
Their dust illumined by a single dim swaying bulb! And I too sway,
Blood sloshing in veins like a bucket carried from the well,
And the words make me stagger, gasping, grasping for her
Like a drunkard who reaches for the rail and finds nothing—
Her eyes, her hands, her voice are long-lost to me,
Shipwrecked, bobbing in some distant sea,
And it was my frantic searching and beseeching that stirred the waves,
Pushed them away, away, away, until she found her way back
To her life and I, in fits and starts, resumed my own.

But on many nights I dream of her dancing in the grainy
Light of memory, of faded photos,
An artist making art so beautiful, I would sell my soul
To hang it on my wall.

Always she refuses my money, tells me my writing takes too long,
Hurries off to a future that’s hers, and hers alone.

Always I wonder, can there not be reconciliation in a poem?

And always I then awake as
Dawn bursts in an instant,
Sprawled against the sky
Like bleeding watercolor.