Love poems

Remember the world without you in it?

Yeah, me neither. Must have been a bleak place. I guess I mostly sat around, writing bad poetry and looking out at the rain. I was asleep a lot. Working nights does that to you - addles your brain. After a few weeks you find every single one of your senses has attuned to the dark. You begin to see better after the sun sets, you hear sounds which in daylight, get drowned out by speeding cars and passers-by. You become a shadow, a background extra to hand out elegant glasses of expensive wine to a beautiful ivory hero in a sparkling gown. In comparison to night daylight seems faded and cheap. An existential crisis stuttering over the train tracks ready to explode.

And then, all of a sudden, you. 

If I was a shadow, then what the hell were you? The dark itself? No, there was dark before you came around. A sadder, lonelier dark. There was raven in your hair and indigo in your eyes. Perfect night colours, I thought. Such fitting aesthetic to your tragic Faustian story-line.  

I told you I had a history of screams. You said your mom killed you once but it was fine because she was dead too so the score was settled now. We both laughed at that, watching the stars glide through the night above us as we build our glass walls. 

In the mornings the beer bottles reflected multicolored rainbows against my closed eyelids. Soft summer green and earthy, orange. The sun was always so warm filtered through the shards. 

I guess I will have to learn to read by the stars alone again. There was this poem we read back in high school. Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.... And yet the clock keeps ticking and the stars keep moving and the sun rises over the horizon to reflect the green glass against my tear-sneaked cheeks. 

God, but it is so hard to read love poems without you at my side. 

Fragment, October 2020