“tell myself”

by Stan Livshin on Oct.05, 2009, under Poetry

Written by Kathleen Sarnes

I’m just going to tell myself you are gone
overseas fighting a war or making one
and pretend our life was a wonderful dream
a dream where I saw your radiant visage
and felt you hold me if only for a moment
only to disappear once again
becoming one with the horizon
I woke up clutching the frayed remnants
of the memory of the last time I felt you
I’m just going to tell myself you are gone
up in space or trying desperately to find some
because Earth is slowly suffocating you
gallivanting across the cosmos
discovering new and wonderful things
about the world and about yourself
I woke up alone but knew it was okay
because you sent the softest, hardest kiss to me
on a moonbeam and it traveled faster than
millions of light years per second
and landed precisely on my crimson coated lips
before you even thought to kiss them
I’m just going to tell myself you’re gone
and pretend but a transient spirit was here
and told me it’s not you it’s me
and vanished into some other distant
realm of existence that I might one day know
if I am lucky enough to gain such entitlement
I woke up surrounded in soft red blankets
that mirrored how I bleed inside for you
how I long to take away all that ails you
how I would in no wise allow you to feel such pain
had I the power to alter anything it would be that
even if I had to take it on myself forever
I’m just going to tell myself your gone
Exploring the depths under pacific waves and tsunamis
Naming new fish after me and after my smile
The one you know only you have created
I woke up and though I told myself you’re gone
I still knew you were not and all at once
I realized that for the first time I could not fool myself
And live in some convoluted lack of reality
No matter how many times my brain lies
And says you are in a million cities or states
My heart knows where you really are
Because you’re in it.