The Kiss,
An ethereal, evocative portrait
rich in gold tones and sentimental iconography,
In us a longing it arouses,
A longing to embrace,
To wear a crown of vines,
To close the eyes peacefully,
To breathe in tranquility
and breathe out intimacy –
To lean in for a loving kiss.
Ashes,
An aphotic, tempestuous portrait
carrying the redolence of a beautiful pathos,
Invite an acerbic feeling:
A feeling of devastated infatuation,
Of dark ink drying on canvas,
Of a soft egg hitting the hard ground,
Of an optimism or naivety
or perhaps an unconscious tendency to hopeless romance,
Of a charred romance burnt to ashes.
The boy who bought us flowers yesterday,
The girl who made us a snack,
The boy we thought would never leave us,
The girl who stopped texting back.
As we scroll through our phones
after a date gone wrong
the mockingbird in our hearts and minds
sings another sad song.
Like a hunt,
Love takes its toll
every time it doesn’t work,
A river of tears flows
time and again along our cheeks.
Love becomes a blue summer sky,
And us, a rising skyscraper;
reaching at it as much as we can
but never quite getting there.
Love is not for us
and it never will be.
And so we find ourselves
in a yellow wood,
Just ahead, two diverging roads lay:
The first leads to art and song,
To friends and work and family –
an acceptance of our fate.
The other,
more frightening and foreboding
leads to one more date.