another aubade

aka yet again you perfume the mornings with more musings of you, after inserting yourself in my dreams for the umpteenth time in a row.

This too, becomes an act of desperation, in the heat of the morning sun—when the slow burn of longing resumes from the plentiful dreams of you that I customarily anoint the back of my eyelids with, becomes a moment of vexation, and not tenderness. I am habitually marred by desires—spring subdues one with unbridled hope; surely, we must be the next to bloom?

And on that note, the infinite wait begins, calling on us to remain tender, even in the brazen face of the vespertine sky drawing first blood. Still, I answer the call. My propensity to skew towards extremes still serves me well, can you not tell? I am a messy thing of flesh, both the most patient, and impatient, especially with all matters of you—at the risk of repetition, you wake multitudes in me. It’s the muse in you. You render me soft. You will me a poet. You make me vulnerable. You leave me holy. You leave me wanting to inhabit the space between your breaths. You make me.

The truth is—I never know how to abate the pangs of desire. I quickly learned, at a young age, to separate necessities from wants. Years later, I cannot recall wanting anything to a great extent, like water in cupped palms, it eventually finds a seam and pours out. I found a solution to a non-optimal part of the human experience, or so I thought. But then, you. What is it about you that slips past my checks-and-balances, and renders me a yearning mess? Why do I find you so abundantly in sunlight? Nights lose their restorative property, and take on a new quality, newness. Every dream—another foray into your neat divinity.

I.          THE FIRST DREAM

You’re still swaddled by light—I bask in the light of your glow. You constantly invent new ways to be ethereal. You embody tenderness in explicable ways. Last night, it was the darkest it’s ever been, and in the sweetest fashion, you pour moonlight on me.  And again, I wonder—what is your kinship with the light?

You soften into the wind, like aged sunbeams dissipating on the first touch of earth. You are fleeting. I can spend the better portion of an eternity plucking the words from a starry night, and still, wouldn’t have enough words to forge you into a poem.

An aureole of hair—you, a lithe sight for sore eyes, in infinite tenderness & breath, you stain most things in the exact shade of your eyes. Your presence knows no bounds, spilling into rooms you haven’t stepped foot in yet, as if to announce your arrival.

II.         UPON WAKING

I am steadfast in my resolution to tend to the thicket of words that I hide the rawest parts of you. I sugar them, I coat them in wax, I render them down, because what else does one do with the jagged parts of them? I used to think gnawing on them to get the marrow would bring elucidation into classifying you, but it only left me more confused. We all have our multitudes.

III.       AFTER YOU

Some days, I feel like I’m only entitled to a sliver of the sun—warmth eludes me. I often think, warmth is the gentle haunting of a memory, one that softly prods at your hands to remind you that they were meant to be held, that touch is the first undoing.

The shadow you impart on me through your absence spans from coast to coast—do you know there are cultivars of primrose that are shade-tolerant? Needing only little light to sustain itself, as long as its water and soil requirements are met. I’m no where near the sea, and I think my soils are due for a tilling, yet still—I subsist, in parts.

A fevered dream?

Perhaps.