The Waiting, a.d. (June 2026)

 

The Waiting

Momentarily she steps
away from her vigil and suddenly,
a stillness. He has receded
even from dreams. His memory is an abyss she skirts
like the frayed edge of a rug an excess
of love has ruined. The loom by day
dances its song; by night,
like the mind, unravels.
Over the vastitude of the hall gazes
flit as each holds the other captive.
As the garden unburdens itself, so does
the mind. The bruising
tapestry attests the languor of the house.
Masters of impatience,
the goats cannibalize each other.
We construct our prisons by hand, weaving memory
into memory. How much of a man
is made from the measure of what he’s left behind?
 
II

The stranger entered like a breeze
through stiffened linen. Futilely
we seek our dead in the faces
of strangers, the bereft heart drifting,
instinctive and sightless, into
the most familiar harbor. When he knelt
in front of her longing, its ripeness burst
open like a severed thigh.
You do not recognize blindness until
its consummation, just as anything that comes
gradually slips in unfelt. Is a dream still a dream
after it’s been granted,
or does it become volition, its unraveling
a burden that must be borne?
How much can be forgiven when
to keep loving a person after they’ve become
someone else tastes like a betrayal,
when their transformation feels like murder?

III

Still, the stubborn heart has the potency
to wait forever, despite the brief sojourn.
By nightfall she will repeat the rituals, listening
beyond the silence and its song. She will tangle
the noose between her fingers, probing within
the vastness of the mind. Like a vagrant she will search
for him among the threads, each night his essence
a little less substantial, a little further lost.