​

Write me, Saudade

Floating on invisible meters,

you came to me like a verse

determined for a voice; just

as quickly as you fluttered

to me, over unwritten words

on this lonely night, you left

sailing like a confident eagle.

Not flown too far from post,

you tottered back to my page,

nesting a lost, fractured spirit;

could you have had a stumble

on gravelly penitence? By will

or persuasion, your narcissistic

feathers rest upon your chest,

closed from flight, your eyes

engulfed by an aimless mist

resuscitating long buried hope

of returning to the old home

of waiting, where time can be

held, inescapably.

One-sided

It’s odd how I don’t remember

your geographies, much less

histories. But, I know the land under

my feet right now is a rocky sea

of indecisive structures. I blame

your sand for spoiling my habits,

exposing me to unpredictability,

the escalating and plummeting,

teaching me heat, and then cold,

and then leaving me to fix

my inability to adjust.

Your gregarious moods have

ruined me. I talk the confused

babble of an ignorant know-it-all;

I walk with an arrogance sculpted

like your exaggerated architectures;

I whine under these un-catered

for inadequacies. You didn’t teach me

to be less, and now, I can’t

accustom to being a different more.

I carry about this one-sided

love affair, the frown by my brow

has become a ridged bridge hanging

over a mass of irreconcilability.

You prolong, unfazed, this distance,

and I walk a new land every day.

I watch you grow in pictures

or in people’s star struck words –

those new to your charms. But, I know

the land you were – you have been

building new histories.