Definitions and Terms

Can I tell you something about the words you thought you knew?

Can I? Can I really speak

About the driving force that changes things

From the old words into the new?

I know that sounds repetitive, but I swear to god it isn’t

I’m never more sure of the unsure things

Than when their time has come

To read by a dimly-lit reading light

That can help me see the sacred truths

Of where I hoped we might’ve gone

And what can’t be undone.

And now we’re here, I guess.

We stand atop the molehill of a single most childish dream

With the foolish finite hope perhaps

That it might be a precipice

Over which we could dangle dangerously

In hopes to see the morning rise

In eternal replication of a societal destination

Where matters of the heart are far more comforting than their lies.

But I swore I’d tell the truth to you

That’s the one thing I can give

And yet the bitter facts of men truly have no merit

No exchange rate

No great comfort lasting in

The echo of a syllable and tears that smear the written word.

They light a burning hole so deep into the blackest ink

And all of the concerns held tight

To a petrified raft, now stone, that only ever sinks.

At the whim of each and every fading ship who would leave alone

The calling of a future now abandoned in ice and snow.

Where at last it finds the quiet and the slow embrace of time

Deep within the cavernous whim

Of the words that will mean ‘goodbye’.

That’s the word I’m searching for

I know you see it too

The pain that travels seven stops

For the sake of what I’d do

To make it last forever in the world I thought could be

Where we are nautical unsinkable ships

Who cannot drown if we’re not on the seas.

If we’d avoided the fearsome winds and rain

To sit silently in the bay

It’s there we’d see our sunrise

At the dock along the shore

So far from every towering wave,

So long, my thunderstorm.

I’ll admit these lines make me self-conscious.

What a stupid choice of words.

But this is my poem, my story,

And honestly, it doesn’t even matter if I’m heard.

Not by the one it’s written for or the ones who might find joy

In knowing the simplest truths of life:

That even as each heartbreak casts their every weighted stone

You are a biblical Magdalene

And at least you are not alone.

I like to think you’re hearing me just like once I thought you might

But the time for finding meaning

Has passed beyond these fading words.

It will leave us at the church bell toll that signals worlds stretched out before

A path for you to wander down

A path for you alone.

And I know you will not think of me

But rest assured, on that day I’ll wave

Goodbye to the things that never were

What never was

Goodbye.

You didn’t stay.