Ink-Stricken

Somewhere between vowels and consonants you disappeared Although I looked for you beneath apostrophes semicolons and quotation marks, Really "where are you love" I groaned "I'm here, expecting you" I moaned Commas and fullstops did I leave behind dash-bridges I hopped over and question marks I climbed, and through the narrow pathways of tankas and haikus ? tumbled down to footers page numbers and footnotes. Out of the frontispiece pier untied my sailboat's ropes and pierced your pages waves, but moored into your colophon's bay. I yelled "Nothing, my love, a single sign" my words were left unsaid. Line after line I stepped down every word you've written and went up even more in case I caught you up. I yearned for your caressing touch while you turned your pages but you, writing about the self I am no more no notice did you take of me. when you took up another book, The tears I cried the cover burned wetting your poems' ink and washed me down to your new reading to new adventures to new endeavours. And you, my love, thinking of rhymes you took my hand to take me out to dine, to breakfast and to lunch. And I, my love, followed your lead knowing that at my every heart beat you'd only hear your verses chime.