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Wind Chapped Desire
They no doubt enjoyed drinks and pleasantries;
perhaps weights torn from chests
that I'd kept heavy for weeks now.
If that distance to fondness corollary should hold
we might find a more somber truth in its negation;
for proximity makes us color blind and somewhere,
not too far from where I now sit alone, she shares cocktails
and meat grease under dim lights with a friend, a stranger,
someone far removed from the last few years and
our lukewarm passion. I honestly pray that a new lightness
lifts her there, she can forget about the world a moment,
in the unpredictable presence of someone else.
We do this to ourselves, us romantics, us wallowed
woe-stricken mental isolationists. A full farcical day of
that poorly veiled jealousy I'm never sure what to do with.
Sure, I was invited, but an invite feels like scorn when it's
hoped you wont attend. Now, alone for the first time,
struck suddenly with heart ache and thirst, we must laugh
at our own self-righteousness. For strangers stomachs
never ache, at least not that they mention, and the way
they look at you could heal a broken head or heart.
When the weight is gone she'll return to me here, where
I'll begin the long process of piling it back up. What good
do all these soured feelings do anyway? For what purpose do I
cling to this wind-chapped desire?
Copyright ©
Earl Mitchell
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