marjoram
marjoram, my friend,
(is it weird for me to say when we only met on tuesday?)
do you remember when you complimented me?
we’d only known each other from afar yet
you sounded so proud, so sincere,
and i’d like to think that you were
smiling under your bear snout mask.
marjoram, my dear,
it’s only been a few weeks;
long enough for me to notice
how bright your warm brown eyes shine, and
how animated your hands become when you
delve into a plot and recount book scenes i’ve heard before,
but would hear again for you.
marji, my dear,
three months, already! recall that moment when
we sat together on that bridge overlooking
tibone lake, the two of us bursting into giggles;
yours was restrained before
succumbing to the dying goat laugh that was mine;
the smell of apple blossoms filled the air as
i placed my head on your shoulder,
a comfortable silence settling over us.
marji, my love,
six months. six months i’ve been
blessed with you in my life but then i
see you with your other companions,
and wonder:
should i meet some terrible fate too soon
too fast,
will your heart weep for me?
or am i only grasping at loose strands,
invisible to all but those whose hearts
have learned to betray them?
marji dear,
it was the day before the valentine’s dance.
our text messages were set up so perfectly and
i wanted to text “i love you”.
so i did, not before adding
“(platonically)”
after my words;
oh, you should’ve seen the red blotches that
tinted my cheeks when you didn’t respond
marjoram dear,
nine months passed, several of which
i harbored this thing that i now realize is love for
you.
but how could I?
how could I have done this to
myself when I knew that you would never
see me the way i see you?
marjoram,
it’s been ten months. when school
let out for the last time,
we went to the bridge where i fell in love with
you. We just sat there, our arms linked together,
silence blanketing us
together.
Marjoram,
How has it already been nine years?
I never got to say the words that
lingered on the edge of my mind,
even through college, grad school, and beyond;
and look where that got me. Standing
in front of etchings on a gray slab,
a bouquet of fresh flowers in my hand, in
a scene that could’ve gone
very differently.
But it is only when i
see your epitaph — those sacred words i had
whispered to you when i
thought you were asleep on my shoulder —
that my heart
beats ever faster and i
try to wipe my tears away and
will myself to calm down, to breathe,
except how can i?
for i have always loved you, marjoram,
would’ve done anything to make it work, taking
measures to conceal our love in front of others,
making sure we were safe;
but why did it take you
ten years to finally
give me the words that i had always
longed for,
ten years too late?
moonlight
it was the light touch of your fingers that
lingered after you caressed my cheeks — the ones you
lovingly dubbed “astrid’s sweet
apple cheeks” as we wrapped
each other in a warm embrace under
the stars, reading out
quotes in the hazy glow of
your mother’s camping lantern.
and it is this same touch that
i crave when you have
ventured to a place that refused to
show us mercy, to give us more time. it is
your hand around my waist your
arm around my shoulder the
space in between your neck and chest that has
always been the perfect place for me to
lay my head that
i long for, for it has
always been you.
it’s always been you.
but fate, nor time, would have it any other way,
and so this is where i part with
you, my love. back to where it all began,
under the moon and its stars;
a goodbye that i wished
i never had to give.
skeletons
they’re sleeping next to me and
the TV’s still on, the cartoons going on with
toys strewn all over the floor
popcorn on our coffee table;
it was just as rowan would say,
“organized chaos”.
rowan’s got a way with words;
she likes to refer to me as “her love”
and our daughters as “her treasures” but then i
see the lamp that illuminates our living room with a
soft, cozy glow and everything
comes back as i
shudder under the
weight of these memories
and wonder if she’d call me “her love”
again if she knew about the
skeletons that lie in our closet.
is this in the metaphorical sense?
the literal sense? i guess we’ll never know.
but i hope she never looks
in the wooden box on the top shelf of
our master bedroom closet,
wilted apple blossoms and herbs, and
a bear snout mask within.
author’s note: this is a collection of poetry that i had written for our m&m partner poetry event, where we would read other writers’ poetry and create our own interpretations. personally, i found that these poems were best read in one sitting, hence the ‘three strands” (three poems) of “twisted moonlight” (all the ebbs and flows of the events that intersect from various poems and led to the narrators’ predicament). i hope you enjoy it!
