In fading light

A man stands at his window

Hoping the dusk will cover his tears

His father used to say, real men don’t cry

He has been all his life, a man with high collar, who tried

To set an example, to be of service

And when he bared his soul

Trusting

His fledgling heart was given back in a box

With rejection on its lid

For he has never secured adoration, in pretty promise

He is too much of this world, to turn away

From peacock girls who pick his wallet and leave his wish-bone gnawed clean

I would like to tell him, your heartache is your own making

But it is as much a symptom of the tendency humans possess

To chase the moment and dwell less on what we already have

For willful blindness comes in many forms

When realism plays a part, two souls will find a way through

The mire of longing and losing hope

His is the loneliness of a man who never observed

A slow, quiet form of devotion and instead subsisted upon

Shiny images of what he speculated, could be love

Those girls who rifled through his trouser pockets

For the last bit of change or shiny bauble

I would show him myself if he were not

So broken, he couldn’t see the stroking value now

Of plain faced humans, seeking in afternoon sun

Allusive emotion