The Empire We Never Built

I will likely always remember her face

Lit by the fall sunset

From the West side

During the fall of our fiery empire.

She looked at me as if I was still her queen

As if she could still become

All that her words had been promising me

For so long now

Her bright eyes and infectious smile sedating my senses

And my heart beat on the sleeve of her armored leather jacket

A mere jester of the court within which she regularly held my wits

 

They asked us if we were married

So they could tell their newly out daughter

A story of a lasting love

Like the kind they imagined between us

And we laughed and curled into each other

Hope set aflame once again

By the adoration from the witnesses to our

Waning sun soaked ceremony

They raised their glasses to toast us

And, I let my lips melt again into hers

Languidly speaking in tongues

This miracle we shared from day one

The “gift” that kept us circling back to each other

Desperately

Aching to translate this connection into a daily language

That might feed the dying embers

That might rebuild this crumbling kingdom

 

I will likely always remember how my body melted into hers

Holding her tightly in my favorite resting places

While riding on the back of her bike…

Wildly shouting my love for her above the engine and by name

Her hand reaching back to fiercely claim her fiefdom

Our helmets hiding our public displays of passion

How fast

How far

Did we regularly ride in an attempt to outpace

The unrest of our pedestrian life?

I would have ridden forever like that with her…

Alone? We were unstoppable…

For days

Stopped? We were alone…

For weeks

Retreating,  to separately source fuel for reignition

 

I will likely never understand

How deftly the bright light of our outward image

Hid the fragility of our inward smoldering burn

I wondered how we could be received like such love royalty

So often blinding others with our jewel encrusted façade

When behind the bling we projected

Lay no calming blue heat

No bedrock or foundation

Needed to unite us in the face of shared and separate enemies

And upon which we could build an empire

The emotional prisoners chained deep within the dungeons

Of the fantasy fortress we had built to keep them out.

Whose moans and howling rages haunted us

Even after so many magical moving musical nights

They simply could not be silenced, soothed, or cut free….

 

I will likely always remember her face

Lit by a warm recognition

That second summer night she met me

Perhaps I should have known by then

The fickle nature of a love that dawns at night

But after weeks wrapped in her written sorcery

I was easily bound by the spells

I was waiting to receive

So strange to remember the complete safety I felt

Encircled in her arms for three dreamy days

As I now sort through the ruins of our repeated toxic unravelings

Our “love” slain by how many mindless and soul shattering insults she slung?

So much lost playfulness and dreaminess

As each old wound’s scab was shred

With each wrath-filled moment.

I let her wicked words slice through me

 

And, though she has not been the hardest ending,

She has been the hardest goodbye

The hardest heart to radically accept will leave me again, unseen

Sorting through the pieces of our story, her story…

Left scattered around our abandoned battlefields

For me to randomly stumble across

Haunted by her smell

Haunted by my own self-hatred

I will likely always have to remind myself

That there was nothing else I could do

(THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO!!!)

I was never going to be able to prove my love

My worth

My good heart to her

(there was nothing I could do…)

So familiar this useless fight

Even I have grown bored of my own circular stories

This lesson must be…for keeps

So I will lay quiet until this storm passes

And this.too.*shall*.pass.

And one day when I ride again

On my own

I will likely always have to remember

When the warm Western sun lights my face

It is my own name I must learn

To shout out

Above the engine

In love

~ T