An indelible line was drawn.

 Should I forgo the dreams of years ago?

The time you paused; twice stopped, you said,

"This is not what I imagined of you."

You were a season I did not expect.

Should we play on the way the world has changed?

Any kind of goodness won't make us kind or good

All your efforts to save the whole have come to nothing.

Here, at the end of everything - I only remember -

The way the uncertain smile sits on your face as I drift away.

A good, good drunk.

When the mumerade you were and what bands you stanned mattered

your trash television and your up to date musical dictionary

( in one ear and out the other )

Loved me. Autumn your fingers through my hair

We crooned out Confessionals and Dylan and Love as these things were
Handles of Morgan and fancy beer

We argued whether these were drinkable and whether Beatles were anything

Hold my hand - I fall in love - Very often - I still do

When I was younger (15, and 20, and 25, and 30)

I thought that love because the way that light attaches to a girl

( in one year and out the other )

Was very young of me - surely I would grow out of this

This imagining a lifetime with you.

Now between moments when you slip into bed and when I fall asleep

I find that older I still dreams those dreams

I lean into - falling in love - often I still do

That blanket on the lake

The green grass tickling our feet

As I drift fingertips up to your knee and back to you.

Reading passages you have already read me

You remark - you always remark - we should be getting back

To somewhere because I'm getting too much sun

And kissing you too much.

Once upon a spring in spring

Some days I dream that apogee
under your long ago sky
when no space was left between our hands
you marked your soul and heart on mine

and we kissed a first time for hours

I left with days of butterflies

fumbling through the notes of I love you

 - no feeling this could ever end

since then a lifetime under skies

regrets and fumbled last goodbyes

I am still grateful for this dream

the mark set in my heart and eyes 

Shapes of the sin that we could not excuse

Weary we wait in this dismay

All held to love when love gave way

Where pleasures cease and embers die

In hearths whose hearts have long since strayed

And all our friends have chosen sides;

Archives of love and its labors sustained

Patching a pair where all passion had waned.

Imminent ends go unperceived

If we count only miles achieved

Missing milestones slipping by:

One last day hand in hand ungrieved,

One last kiss barely felt implies

Shapes of the sin that we could not excuse:

Choosing to stay in dismay was abuse.

where I end and you begin

the heat here among hearts and hands
while I am all my grinning you
brush your hair back over and

over laughter when the tricks are -
bluffs and feints and well played plays-
better than anything ever and

how fingers brush again reaching
( for cards forgetting whose turn ) it was
in the while where smiles speak and

then this is just the slightest touch
which asks 'how much are you alive
in hopes I might reach out in kind' and

then in boldness brush again
all we are is sifting through hands
where I end and you begin