An Almost Terrible Ending To A Beautiful Story

Staring at a picture of her and I,

    I start to feel alive.

She pulls away.

   She hides.

I am too much;

    Always too much for the wrong lady.

Gray hairs on my chest now;

   This one drives me crazy.

This love is toxic,

    But some poisons heal.

This love kills,

    And heals,

And repeats;

    So I let it kill me.

Like my boy Dostoevsky said, “I ran into love because I needed it to destroy who I used to be.”

  This love doesn’t let me rest peacefully,

It demands all of me;

   And it is as natural as breathing;

And as unnatural as believing.

So many miles between her and I.

   Tomorrow I might die.

And she would let me.

She’d shed a tear for a few weeks,

   But then she’d feel peace.

But after a few months stewing in the loud silence,

    Combined with the sudden absence of my warm presence,

She realizes that my sad eyes never told her a single lie;

     I was her soulmate. 

Love was always our fate. 

   But now, 

Love is too late. 

We missed our moment trying to hold it. 

We couldn’t leap when it was time to leap. 

All our music, talks, poems and books were cheap in the end. We are selfish cowards. We always were. 

This is the end. 

 . . . What a terrible ending to a beautiful story. 

. . .

I crumble up the picture and try to toss it in the trash can. A strange gust sweeps through my bedroom, taking it off course. It misses wide left. 

I try again. Same thing, a strange wind; out of nowhere, a bizarre gust. 

“What the fuck?” I ask. 

The wind takes the picture and pins it back on my wall. 

“God Dammit,” I mutter. 

The dragonfly painting next to it speaks, saying, “Hallelujah. Love is born again.”

CH 6/5/26