7 Stages of You

I still think of you from time to time
I watch the wind blow through your hair
and the sun smile on your cheeks
I still think of what you're doing
the subtle smile when you tease me
the laugh when just your lips are participating
I know it's broken now.
I know it will never be the way that it was.
I also know I could still reach you,
at that breaks me more for every moment
I don't.
I wonder if life would have been different
I know that it would have
I feel that sensation all the time, that we are
the star crossed lovers
We could have been everything
and yet we are not
Of all the loves in my life,
you are the strangest, boldest, strongest,
hardest, and most unique
Of the distance I have placed between my heart
and theirs
this distance hurts me the most
I dream of you
I fall into fantasy of our world
had we been able to have it.
I fall in love with every version of you
I create in my mind, and yet they all still pale
in comparison to the you I held in the afternoons
singing to you while you slept on my chest.
Strangely, so much of my life was touched by you
and yet it still feels like sometimes I awoke from
the greatest fever dream.
I don't want to hold onto hope that one day
we might have that great love.
One day we might be together the way I had
always plead for.
I don't want to hope because I don't want to break
forever.
But sometimes,
it just feels like I might.

Dancing

I remembered the way you smelled, clear, blue, and free.
I followed the trail all the way to the nape of your neck,
where I lost myself while we danced in a sea full of strangers.
My hands in your hair, wondering if it was okay to touch you like this.
Every graze of your body on mine was a shockwave.
Every hum of the words from your chest, penetrating my fingertips.
How do I keep you?
How do I hold onto this moment?
How do I stay here, for the rest of my days,
every moment waiting to be shocked back to life with the sensation of your smile on my cheek?
I'm paralyzed by what might happen next.
I'm high on hope and low on guard.
What happens when the music stops?
What happens to this slow and steady sway?
I close my eyes and evaporate into this moment,
praying for infinity, and seismically feeling every second.
The beats and strums from the speaker slow, the ones in my chest hasten.
The crowd comes alive, as if they could understand that word like I do now.
You kiss my cheek, I lose my knees.
You pull away from me, and let the cold foreign air between us.
I'm pulling from you like the spoon in a honey jar.
This can't be over so soon, this tiny nirvana.
The room is coming back into focus, the sensations back into my feet.
Was it always this loud in here?
Did it always have this smell?
I know I have to turn around soon, to face the stage and leave your eyes.
Just one more breath of that clear blue freedom, before we become you and I again.