home again -

I am home ... oh, my heart pray, hush its cadence for the sacred sake of unsated thirst beg its thrums be not now abounding ... each dream comes haunting, dusted in dusk every sentimental pluck of its syrupy strings beckons you back to my yearnings, interminable every wistful pang is strummed by your affect on me ... this place, dipped in the dripping mist of morning echoes things quite beyond my words ... of you 'tis no forte for flowery phrase can capture it no poetic capacity worthy of its description ... it pulls and mills my spirit like the ebb of the briny blue but to its most dark, stinging, brumal depths you were such a visceral part of my fibre from the quintessence of deep, dreaming slumber ... to the first nascent meanderings of each wish-flavored morning (your sublime taste still seasoning my mouth ... and my mentalities) from the uncommon commonplace of teatime sun in your tresses to the chipped-edge porcelain puddles of the mocking moon ... cackling at my fevered foolishness for its glint in your eyes or for your skin, when you'd dip your toes in pale pools of twilight my core breathed you like youth breathes rebellion and the cells of you pressed on my emotions, infused my blood ... coursing like the fire of a drug through my arteries ... never - ne'er did I touch you but to write secret stories on your skin fingertips spelling out sexy words in cursive ... or focusing the intent of my heart to a simple caress - a brush of your shoulder, a graze of your cheek, a stroke to put your hair gently behind your ear a pillow-deep hug - full of warmth and security ... a gentle pat of your knee ... or a grasp of your hand - like heaven, fingers married to the spaces between mine like perfect dovetail this place, to some, is just that - a place ... but it was OUR place, and it yet sighs of US deeply, forlornly, achingly ... the wash of the waves is but the whisper of your name, the salt-sea fresh air aromas are your perfume ... the feel of the cool sand under each footstep is but a soft memory of the tender, tousled passion we shared, and this dark, brooding, breathy day, is the mist-daubed remnant of my heart ... the melancholy that drips from my spirit to the well of days gone ... I shall not come here again, though I love it so - oh, how I adore this place and all it means it is my home, as YOU will always be ... the lighted window at the end of weariness, the flaming hearth that kindles my marrow, the soft, sweet pillow that cradles my head at night ... no, I MUST not ever return, or it will surely claim me ... it will swallow me as time has swallowed you, it will transform me into this damp, dour, graying caste and I'll be lost to the wind and the dark and the ache just as surely as you - my home - are lost ... to me. ~ 1st Place ~ in the "Best Free Verse Poem October thru December 2017" Poetry Contest, John Hamilton, Judge & Sponsor. ~ 2nd Place ~ in the "Broken-Hearted Poems" Poetry Contest, Broken Wings, Judge & Sponsor.