You swim in the ocean of perfection,
and I carry the weight of your absence.
Together we fooled no one but me,
you are not mine and I am no longer my own.
I slipped away from your life,
like a grain of puffed rice falling from an open palm.
This pain, perhaps it’s shame as well,
but tell me, to whom and how, do I speak of it?
You never thought how your farewell would drain the color from my tomorrows.
I once believed,
I would keep all my burning complaints safe with you,
I believed you were my final court of truth.
But you became someone else’s,
and left me endless fire to burn in.
The pain you gave, whom else could I tell it to?
There is no cure, no medicine, no substitute for that wound.
The man who rests his head on your chest tonight, he doesn’t know,
someone once dreamed of resting there,
and in that failed dream, he built a desert in his own heart.
In the deep of night,
when he breathes in your body’s contentment, he doesn’t see,
on the other side of the wall, another man’s eyes are flooding with silent tears.
When visions of your union return to me,
I feel the beast inside gnawing my brain,
then plotting to devour my heart next.
And so today I am helpless, wrecked, drowning in emptiness,
becoming horribly alone in your absence.
There are countless souls in God’s vast world,
yet when I remember, you are not mine,
your absence makes me feel,
this vast world too is hollow, unbearably empty.