For Debbie, my dead lover, on the 5th year since her death.

Beyond reach soft whispers
Come and go delicately;
I still reach for you.
I find only emptiness.
Silently the dawn breaks
My bound heart.
I still search for you
only to find cheating shadows;
Fragments, memories, phantoms;
Those gentle words you left behind.

The day finds me sitting alone,
with your words to keep me company
Lingering over these words
Each single connotation
wraps me in silence.

Through words I look back
To remembered yesterdays.
Those fleeting fading days
we spent together

Appealing to your words
I trace each one
looking for other possibilities,
meanings that can slide under
this cruel measure of reason.

So my days are spent
Reflecting on each slippery connotation
looking for something solid
to fill my heart.
These fragments only bind
my grieving heart to this distant present.

Still I measure each word
you left behind
what else can I do?
Lingering in this shadowy place
I am a prisoner walking the yard:
each word a step
in this struggle to find meaning.

Experience remains a tapestry
woven from loss and gain.
I am torn between a head
that reasons
and a tattered heart that knows.

Left to trace borderlines
I weigh possibilities
one past against another
Looking for connections;
experience still remains
wrapped in silence;
I will not let this rocky world
shatter me.

But memory is more than words,
A sound touches my heart
I am filled with another time
Emotion, impressions, colors
Flood over me,
but the distant moment returns me to myself.

Silence whispers into the night,
as I toss and turn
seeking you in my dreams.
I long for your wildness
Just one delicate embrace;
To reach beyond
To touch velvet softly the darkness.
Silence still whispers at dawn light;
My heart hungers, a lonely sax;
Desire moves past my blood;
bare tenderness
Longs to be touched.
I whisper your name into the night
You cannot answer me;
I remain tangled in desire.