Tonight I Write

Oh I am there with you every second, yet I'm so far

and I cry, not because I can't write like you, 

but the beauty of the words

wash me away

and absolve me

I say out loud every single sentence

emoting, absorbing

feeling

the little drops of heaven, written for a young lady so lucky

and I wonder if she ever read them

and returned your love

in dime a dozen or 

never at all 

because she couldn't understand

feelings that she never felt;

I know how it feels, to have wasted countless words.

What secret did you hide

in that vortex you call your heart?

and did you die in bed with a lovely woman

twirling her hair 

touching her lips

finding the treasure,

or as a lonely man, accidentally inking your pocket

spending years imagining and longing tenderness

but thankful for the pain?

Because that's how we love

in the handcuffs of despair

a looney dog barking with hunger

a village without a source of water

we're lost like a broken compass

we're fighting, you and I,

we're fighting love, 

we're fighting for our right to love

we're romancing the threat 

to pull the rug from under its feet

the earth might meet the sky

and swallow us completely 

and I hope you'd catch my hand

before it slips

because I never want to say

I lived and never loved

I loved and never cried

I cried but never died

I died but never read Neruda.