I\'m Leaving You, But Come With Me
I\'d take the road flecked with the late sun\'s gold
To escape you—but you\'d hitch a ride in my pocket.
Every city wears your face,
Windows mirroring your frown when I try to peer through.
The world\'s tainted where we step,
Sullied peaks and valleys—you and I, latecomers.
Cafes hidden in alley mists,
We pass unseen, you with your map, I with my thirst.
We lay in the dirt, beside the murmur of a tired stream
Under nights heavy as curtains—never ours to part.
Clumsy tools in the hands of a blind god:
I pour my prayers into a trembling pond, a circle of repetition—
A ritual of taking what was never given,
Since what I yearned for scurried into the thicket.
You whispered once, \"Desire wilts;\"
Becomes a dry husk of a word, a brittle echo.
Onlookers capture your tears in their shutters,
While the dusty shroud I brought us was a trove of nightmares.
Misremembered, I let it slip from thought to afterthought.
Sleep is a stranger by your shuddering silhouette,
My eyes—dull satellites orbiting restless.
Watercraft of every sort drips sorrow from its bow—
Every vessel a grim reminder:
All things carry you.