Do you remember,
The words I muttered,
With all the bravery that a teenage boy,
Afraid of speaking his mind,
Could muster,
In the field between our houses,
With infinity spread out between the horizons,
Pockmarked with stars,
Staring down at us to bear witness?
“Is this what happiness looks like?”
Whispered against your cheek,
Hoping you heard.
Hoping you would always hear the echo,
Reverberated back from all the empty halls I’d found myself –
No, that we had found ourselves roaming.
But now,
If I could I would,
Reach up and grab my bouncing words from the starlit sky,
To pull them down and around,
Reshaping,
Into what I meant:
“Is this what love looks like?”
The scene and setting and left me confused,
As to what I was looking for,
And to what you were giving me,
Waiting for your reciprocal kiss:
The one that meant something.
The one I couldn’t give to you,
Not through lack of wanting,
But due to a debt I still owe myself.
I was never happy,
In the way they mean it,
Not with myself or with you,
But I loved you, I love you and I will,
Shout it against the tides of time,
Lest I be drowned out.