Poems/Tremble

 "Tremble" [I wrote this poem a while ago, perhaps about 7 or 8 months ago. Didn't really know where it was going, but it ended up as this. Funny, I don't find myself that romantic, but...]

You had a desert forsaken spine I could never set straight

The sand dunes of my person

Wanted to smooth into

You're an oasis

My evening eyes lingered on the crescent of your figure

Out my mind

And I swore I centered your bones

The day that she broke them

But I kept my own covered because I knew how to be safe

And you were always just a fracture

One fraction away from being whole

I cried out porcupines from the fragments of your cactus needles

The creases in my chain link armor

Proved to be canyon depths

Lodged in your valley

You said centered bones were the synonyms

To perfect

But you didn’t know how flat

They still were—

My help was your antonym

So the whips of your whispers abused my body like riptide

Every uncalled for action

Elongated our estrangement

Back to back,

Your damaged spine was growing again

Though I'm sure you'd never been anything

But leaden

Your pain had been lessened into withdrawal

Perhaps I'm not as safe as I thought I’d be

And I climbed the mountains that were your cheekbones

Became dehydrated by the dryness of those eyes

Just searching for a way to get close to you

I now tremble at the touch of thimbles

Because I suppose I’m not right

For long-term relationships

If we had only spent a day together

Chasing the sun until it burned out white

We would have succumbed to dust;

Wouldn’t that have been enough?

To dust,

We should have returned already

We could’ve been childhood lovers

On and off lovers

For the time being lovers in the midst of strife

Even star-crossed cross-eyed lovers

But not the wishing-we-were lovers

That we seem to be

In my sleeping state

Our ashes become soft powdered snow angels

Dreaming of a heaven

Where sand dunes could cry

Yet when I awoke your tenor told me

I could not quench your thirst for hydration

The desert can drink relentlessly

One gulp does not satiate more than a minute minute

And I do not belong with the bonded, bosomed beehive

Called your love

The discordant chords of muffled punches

Chafe me like coal-mining cart rides do

I’m being plunged into your masochistic melody

I hear the contra-tempo of your consciousness

Pounding a rhythm of symphony into words

Wood-wind instruments that were your braces

Burden my back

As they once did to you

My percussion beats a rhythm of wasted potential

The lack-luster filled silence summarizes

My alto is too high out of your range

The half-circle of your contoured shape

Rebounds now

We are two creatures who tremble;

We will never work it out