day 14, poem 13

[firecat]

xposted to 100poems

the secret

You don't have a face today. Or rather, you've
a multiplicity of faces, blurring and shifting
into each other. But more real to me than
the dozens, hundreds, thousands of faces,
blurring and shifting past my vision,
that I saw today, this month, these decades.

You're the downy warmth under my comforter.
The hunger always lurking under my breastbone.

You have never changed. Not at the core of you.
But how different I am now.
I once hugged my pillow and imagined
the day I would finally hold you.
I dreamed a kiss
I'd never experienced. Virginity
was ignorance and deprivation.

Now sometimes the flesh of a lover
is a barrier between you
and me - too solid, too specific.
I long to absorb myself in a celibacy of you,
a communion of isolation
in which mind whispers silently to mind.