Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
Did you know that I once wrote you a poem?
Yes, I wrote you a poem! Once.
Carefully choosing words, strategically placing them one after each other,
desperately trying to convey, I don't know what.
I think it was love - so you told me.
I wrote you a poem, didn't you read it?

A friend told me to write about real love.
'Real love', she said. 'Your stories are too melancholy', she said.
I see them as funny, as love can be sometimes.
Wasn't our love funny (sometimes)?
I think it was - so you told me.
Do you know that I once wrote you a poem?

We parted as we started, equally dividing the plants,
the books, the plates, the cutlery and eventually the friends.
We saw each other the day, glancing out the corner of our eyes,
pretending to be elsewhere.
We saw, and passed without one word being spoken. Not one.

Don't you know that I once wrote you another poem?
Yes, I wrote you another poem! Once.
Carefully choosing words, strategically placing them one after each other,
as I wrote about 'real love' - I think.
Yeah, it was real love and, a poem with no words...
...because as with 'real love',
the words were never spoken.

I once wrote you a poem,
didn't you read it?
You told me that I write with 'angst'.  I respond, telling you that I write with words, and leave it to you to add the angst.
I’m not sure if I ever told him that I loved him.
I have tried so many times to remember if I did.
Not knowing, makes me even sadder.
I did love him, and I loved him a great deal.
But when you know your love will destroy their dreams, you remain silent.
I was accused by many of pushing him away so I could be free,
they never knowing, I pushed him away from me so he could be free.
I am not sure if I ever told him I loved him,
but I know if I did, he would never be free.
We play a game of Russian Roulette, careful not to wake the dead,
we know that even in death,  there is no guarantee of sleep.
My turn.  Hand slightly shaking, I count backwards.  10, 9, 8, 7..
Will I or won’t I?  5, 4, 3, 2... I will!
I pull the trigger!   ‘click’.  
We laugh.  It is not my time to go.
Big boys, playing with boy toys.  

I want to tell you that I love you,
but boys don’t say that to boys,
I learned that lesson a long time ago.
Jenny drives over to join us
I watch, feeling jealous as you kiss her; how you look into her eyes; how you smile.  
Watching you slightly stroking her breast, I know I shouldn’t,  but wanting to watch, and unable to peel away,
I can feel myself getting hard.
Playing Russian Roulette.
I am 32, way too old to be playing this game.
I have to wait for a suitable moment to eventually head to the toilet.
My sensitivity heightened being in same space as you,
I try to stifle my groan as I ***.

Not wanting to be a third wheel, I’m heading back home.  
Music blaring I’m singing to some camp classic.
As I pull into the driveway, I can see that you’ve left me a message.
You and Jenny have had argument and she’s gone.  I go back to yours.
We talk about Jenny.  How she’s a *****, how all she does is complains, about how crap she is in everything she does, but how at least she gives good head.  We talk and drink.
We drink, we talk, solving nothing, not even our own world problems.  
We stumble up the stairs, laughing about all the stupid **** we just drank ourselves silly about.

I finally get you to your room, plopping you on the bed.  I turn to walk out, but you pull me towards you, with me falling on top you.  We are face-to-face, as I try to pull away, you pull me back.   ‘Man, I tell you, if I were gay, I’d be all over you’, and then you kiss me, on the mouth.  You. Kiss.  Me. On.  My.  Mouth.  We kiss.  We both stop, then stare at each other.  I don’t know what to say.  You smile, and repeat, ‘if I were gay, I’d be all over you’ and fall off into a drunken sleep.

We play a game of Russian Roulette, careful not to wake the dead,
because we know that even in death, there is no guarantee of sleep.
Falling asleep on the couch, I know that you told me love me;
‘but boys don’t say that to boys’, I tell myself, ‘I learned that lesson a long time ago’.
Having had the last laugh, he saw the humour in his ultimate death.

In living, others, he would never find out, just got to laugh a lot longer.
Let me be the person that tells you, every single morning, that you are both beautiful and remarkable.
Take me to a vast and open field and with my last elegy being read, release my ashes as you set me free, free in death, to run with the wind.  No, tears you will not cry - at least not tears of death; but cry for me tears of birth.  Like a new born emancipated from the womb taking its first breath, I will be liberated to take breaths elsewhere.


Tell him.  Tell him that I loved.  Tell him that I loved, if not only him.  Tell him I tried to find the words, I tried.  But I soon found there wasn't enough songs to sing, nor enough words to write and then, never enough time.  Tell him, I became impatient for more time, and then impatient with the time I had.


I want to be buried under a moonlit sky, with only the whistle of the trees’ silence, with no words spoken as I spoke them all before.  Write no words too, as those letters will never tell the stories that we've already told.  Cry, you will not, at least not from my words; and least not from our words.
In her ear whisper.  

In her ear whisper that no matter what, I will stand at her side.  Tell her, my mother dear, the whisper she hears will be mine.  Tell her the whistling of the trees in the silence, with no words said, will be me.  Tell her to take me to a vast open field, so my last elegy can be read, and to spread my ashes with the wind.  Tell her there, to set me free.
Next page