James Friedman
As you sit, face to the ceiling fan
Under the cover of moonlight and past regret
You look to your future with fear
Whatever fear there’s left to have after the present
Which you so fondly flinch from
Like a moth from darkness
Unlike the moth, you fear flame too
Fear the end of the light
Fear the tumbling logs, the fading embers
You clutch at ashes and inhale smoke
As you have your whole life
Or what you can remember as your whole life
And sometimes you forget, that though your life is not whole, that you’ve yet to
complete it
Do no think that you are empty
how could you be a hole
When you have so much to say?
Sometimes you wish to not be here
To have never been anywhere
To have never been
And you tell yourself
“I know how this story ends”
You tire in the day
And lay awake at night
Hoping that the woman you love will return to you in the morning
That though you know nothing, maybe she sees something
That maybe you’re wrong
And that though you run through life like a rill through stones, perhaps you’ve
come by something
to stay for
Something to be for
You love her
You know you do
But you know how this story ends
You know she’ll be back
She said
I love you too
But the world broke
The people in it cut you
Days pass faster than the nights
Worry does not set because it’s already at home within you
And each sun spins its day with you getting older
Older and farther away from the beginning of your story
Sometimes you forget that its still going
Sometimes you forget that it’s yours
But eyes are not facts
and tongues always lie
The seconds pass on clocks
and time keeps its promises
like so few people do
But only the greater works at play
ever hold us accountable
Let them worry about the promise making
We must focus on keeping ourselves
Sometime in the night you awake with a cough
Some day you notice a blur in your vision
Some day you feel your heart beat like a frothing storm as you see the news
And watch as the ones who raised you depart one by one into the place the wind
Can’t carry you
You already know how this story ends
But time takes itself
And when you call her name she still looks back to you
And you see in her eyes the same name you called when you knew she meant it
The kind of shimmer you saw in the fireflies in the yard
The kind of shimmer you saw at the rim of the eclipse
The kind of shimmer that settled in the rill you watched as a child
But you’re right in the end
Standing on eternity’s border you recall the life you lived in passing
In dreams and through windows
Through mirrors and lenses
You know how the story ended
When you tell it to the Angels, they weep at your final line
“And I grew old with her”