It isn’t my weft to self torture

but on occasion, often bidden by

emotions tumbling from rusted cage

I try to restrain them

overtaking my control

then, you are there

in the sunlight streaming through paper blinds

hurting my eyes so that all but a whiteness

is felt behind closed eyes

the unceasing wetness of tears

cause my skin to feel chaffed

even in summer

you would think eventually

they would dry up, but they never do

just as you would think I’d stop

remembering so accutely or

longing so intensely for

things near and far away and closed

as to not exist

except in my urging of them

the you, that you were

confident, slick, arrogant

I have never liked arrogance

but behind it

a soul and a heart

I wished to conquer with my own

urge gentleness out of you

like impatient bird who cries

before it is morning

I often feel, if I allow it

that I was created for you

and despite this

you threw me away

because I could not survive, or pay my way in the world

if I did what you asked

you did not care about that

but only, what you would receive

and though I remember the light in your eyes

dimming and your kisses growing

less in intensity

there are days I wish only

to touch the moments

that for me, were happiest of my life

whether that is absurd or downright

sick

it really doesn’t matter anymore

now we are lost in time and space

spinning away from the other

more and more, with every passing moment

and that hurts as if it were a fresh wound

though it is old and many times healed over

that healing is a lie

because I am never okay

without you and this you knew

when you left, it was to take

the part of me I loved best and

the capture of my heart

the days afterward were

inconsequential even though I tried

to bring meaning back, it was as if

color and sound had fled

only the flowers I bought you

linger in my mind

their lovely pink and the way

flowers must always die

just as

time kills

but does not destroy

the original love

or its resulting

pain

I do not want to spend

more years sitting at tables alone

watching my tears grow cold as

the light captures me in a moment

of you

and how you were

when you didn’t yet know

you would always leave me

the radiance of your smile

still lights my heart

followed by a pain

knowing

that version of you

shall never exist again

that love for me is now

grown over and neglected

by irrevocable doors closing

we did not know, would sabotage

something as true

as the feeling

of us

I still believe if you’d

searched your soul you

would not have let go

for life gives us few

if any

perfect

memories

too often we remain

eternally haunted by

totems to

that absence

23 Replies to “Totems to that absence”

  1. Fabulous, Candice. I have your books and I wondered if I could pick your brain? A young poet who I follow on Instagram asked me how she could publish her poems and I thought you could give a pointer or two? 💐

  2. “you would think eventually
    they would dry up, but they never do
    just as you would think I’d stop
    remembering so acutely or
    longing so intensely for
    things near and far away and closed
    as to not exist
    except in my urging of them”

    This brings back a flood of memories of a dear friend. It’s been 16 years and it still hurts. 😦 Oh my, how your words are so piercing. ❤

  3. We dream always of a perfect love, and with luck (good or bad, I don’t know, likely both) once or maybe twice we feel to have found it and it is glorious, whether or not they stay or we stay, the memory does with the joy and the grief ever fresh as on their first day.

  4. The picture says it all.
    Breaks my heart, this poem.
    “that healing is a lie
    because I am never okay
    without you and this you knew
    when you left, it was to take
    the part of me I loved best and
    the capture of my heart
    the days afterward were
    inconsequential even though I tried
    to bring meaning back, it was as if
    color and sound had fled
    only the flowers I bought you
    linger in my mind”
    Weaver of wondrousness. That’s you.

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