Completion

"Words are spoken at considerable cost to me..." -Edward Hoagland

Tonight, away from the euphoria,
       I am waiting.
I am listening for patterns 
in your breathing,
        and needing sleep
to relieve
me of this new, insufferable hush.
I am needing you to break it
like you do
and tell me if my heart
is beating.
I am twisted in this cocoon of sheets
        and crave emergence
 of the morning.
I fear I have driven us away 
  from the day 
           the rain fell through the trees
                    in summer's
                        scenery, licked up
by sun's buttery heat and I touched
you and didn't speak, and everything
       and nothing
was enough.  I fear because now
                       it's winter.
I fear that night creeps in
and my hair turns golden
and your neck is bent
and so I gaze vainly
at my own reflection and I turn away
from you and when I return, you face
                     the wall
and I lie contemplative willing you to feel
               my desire-
be kin to
               my own sonnetist self
and see me as if after
birth, flitting against
                    a crimson backdrop.
See my soul's beauty when
       my body's beauty
drips oil black as Jezebel's
                          eyes,
because only with you am I intact
       and I am still in awe (in fear)
of whole.
Split for years, I don't know
how I managed to survive or live
             at all.
I knew only the echo
following, flickering in the hollow
  of my thought, but I could not
                           believe
and I learned how to weave
                              temptation into
satiety, drawing in only
                  what I did not want-
cunning spider catching fly
                             to pulverize
shed scent and soft-shed
kisses, devour with deceit of tongue,
but you are wingless and your limbs
the muscle of my intent, the strength
by which I grow and tonight, I feel
                                  the amputation
                                                     in
the limp lamp light hampering
the glow of dark's usual clarity
                     and during this sick
paralysis of lips, I am wrestling
  against the 3 A. M. noose,
choked voiceless I can not answer
                                 and when you
give in and up, I am left alone,
        incomplete mind attending to
                       the monsters in my head
and I can not protect you.  My bones
without your frame are flimsy and gray
unwanted space, my skin.  My brain
frays like an old forgotten lover's, aged
          into decay and so now I know
             there are two ways for me to die:
in a fever, leveled beneath your devotion
or by means of this wide chasm, slow
               and tortuous.
Do your dreams, in my absence,
tell you that I'll be okay?  Cure me
with your daring.  Embrace me in
                                my reluctance
to close my eyes, and shuttle me
into your vision so that I can see me
in you.
Enter through me
and make a still life of my pieces.

The Sunday Whirl