To Love No More

I carried you into my heart

But one arm was missing

As single wing and one handed

I pulled you inside

All the while, you pointing at

My lost absent limb

You told me you’d love me

If I could find that one missing part

The part that would then

Make me whole

I looked into tomorrow

And searched through the past

But my arm had reached out

For something beyond my ability to see

I could still feel the numbing sensation

Of pain

Where the arm had previously

Been attached

The vibration of loss

Now prosthetic for all that was missing

You pitied my deformity as I hid

My eyes

As best I could with only one hand

Telling me the fault was mine

For always reaching beyond what I

Could know or see

And with your final stroke of meanness

And my last ounce of blood

You left me further disabled

Climbing back outside a wish I knew

Was never to be mine

When you left you found the old world

Different than the one you thought you knew

A desert of frozen stone with a black sky

Surrounding the stillness of your abandoned love

As you hesitated to turn around and

Reenter my world

The one that just a moment ago you had

Admonished and left for good

A lone arm reached out and closed the door

Behind you

Leaving you alone in a sea of loneliness

And despair,

—to love no more

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: August, 2016)