His gaze strayed past me
to the wall,
the floor, to anywhere
but my eyes
which I knew shone with tears
and somewhat else.
I took the time to look upon him then,
memorizing his features
in the moment that I had.
Tall, slender frame, the proud
shoulders I had
lain my head upon
Countless times, and
the way the light reflected
shadows and symphonies
on his bronzed locks.
I lived an eternity in that moment,
with the soft chisel
of his
cheekbones
the full mouth turned down in a frown,
and his eyes.
Oh, his eyes
which felt my look and met my own
two deep orbs of the
ocean’s blue fury
filled with all the blissful
agony
of a ceaseless tide and
remorseless wind.
I looked away
feeling the warmth of defeat
suffuse my body
and a fresh saline tear
burn a trail down my
Cheek.
It was not the first,
it wouldn’t be the
last.
After an eternity of moments,
I felt the rough callous
of his fingertips
brushing the tears
from my dampened lashes,
the soft cup of his hand
ss it met my cheek.
I was
sobbing.
All hard-won resolve
dissolved under the insistence
of a gaze I could not meet,
which bore holes through me
though I did not look up.
My entire body gave in
to the painful
bliss evoked
by a single touch, mere caress
of his beloved skin.
I was drowning
and his hand
alone
kept me anchored.
Until something sundered
itself within me
and I flung myself,
a broken vessel,
into the
undoing of his arms.
The haunting pain of
all who had come before
crushed
me with a certainty
as his hair slid across my cheek,
mingling with my tears.
I smelled his scent on the breeze.
Would that I could stand here with him forever
I thought in vain.
Even in pain,
there was nowhere I would rather have been.
Since then,
I have learned otherwise,
how moments we live in are just that,
simply moments,
and it is not meet
that we reside completely within them.
It is not given to us to know
why things happen
as they do,
try though we do
to understand them.
Eventually
his arms slackened,
and I took that
hard step backwards.
I looked up at him,
and my heart broke again
but I saw his mouth open to speak
and shook my head.
“No.”
One word.
My name.
Formed from lips that
I longed to caress with mine.
I could not bear
to hear it from his mouth
right then.
He flinched as if
wounded
and the shards of my heart
turned to dust,
Making what everyone says true
I thought bitterly,
that I was heartless,
truly
heartless
and no amount of work
could put the powdered fragments
of my ironic vessel
together again.
“Didn’t anyone teach you,”
I asked him,
“not to make promises you couldn’t keep?”
A contest entry
- Ordinary World~ by Blkwidow77.
450 points, ended March 4, 2007, 38 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Please tell me what you think
Comments
-
Hello and welcome to my contest. Being that the contests are now 'blind' and I don't know who wrote them, I can no longer read people's poetry and note their progress from one contest to the next. Also, I will then need to use my disclaimer part of reviews, for those who have never recieved a review before, as I don't know if you're new or not. (unless I happen to recognize your style of writing and know who it is)
You're welcome to put your name in your author notes, if you're one of the ones that likes me to note your progress in your writing.
"The original disclaimer":
~I feel it necessary to tell people unaccustomed to me, a little something about my personality. And that is, I'm inclined to be bluntly honest. Not mean, just straight forward about the impressions your piece left me with and suggestions I might have. You are not obligated to change a thing. But it is always wise to at least take them into consideration.~
That being said, let's move onto your piece. I can see that you picked a very sensitive moment to write of. Those are the hardest, I find, to put into poetry, because you often too close to the situation to be abject about writing it. Often, you need to wait a while, till the initial swell of feeling has passed, so you can look at it with a purely poetic eye.
I say this, because I found you 'telling' a great deal, where 'showing' would have been more striking to your readers. It is one thing to say that you are sad, and quite another to let them feel it for themselves through image.
So what what I would love to see, is where you take two stanzas of telling, and bring it down to six lines of good image and word play to show what you were 'telling' instead. I think you could make a great piece from this. (most pain does make for poignant poetry, I should know)
For example, in the second stanza, the first six lines were telling. But then you get to the seventh through the tenth lines, and lapse into proper poetry, which I think says so much more for you and your plight. You have a good tone, you just need to weave more of your poetic tinture in this. Just food for thought though.
Either way, thanx for coming to play~
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