I Was Promised Freedom

I was promised freedom,

When we parted seasons ago,

The weathers have come anew,

But you remain.

 

The grey curls of memories,

Seep into my present,

Wispy, smoky, mannerless,

As if to mock all cries of

Carpe diem!

 

I live for the moment;

No, I don't,

I lie quite well actually,

And draw tapestries without you,

With the expert forgetfulness,

That you once fell in love with,

For I was adorable, wasn't I?

Through your eyes, I always was.

 

And yet in forgetting you,

I make my tapestries with holes.

 

Your empty silhouettes haunt me

With the icy grip that the warmth

Of the million colorful threads

Can never purchase.

 

I drown in your whispers,

And the soft music of your laughter

That my heart stashed away

With the seriousness

Of an architect visited by visions.

 

Visions of the future we built together,

One joke at a time,

One silence at a time,

Locked eyes to dictate

The landscape that should follow

That lifetime

That we worked on with gentle hands,

Memories crafted with practiced love;

Their unborn children,

Possess me

Like a madman.

 

I rave and foam and froth behind the masks,

Of laughter and polite posture

That the world demands to see

Lest my rain should drown them too.

 

And I drown and drown,

And grasp at feeble straws,

And find echoes of your fine angles,

In some foreign geometries.

 

But they never fit the tapestries

I wove for you.

 

I must burn these tapestries,

Mustn't I?

And in losing them I might find

The freedom I was promised,

Before I knew I must exorcise

Not just who you were,

But what you made of me.