#deveril

what is illusion?

I can’t distinguish

reality from

fiction anymore:

a well-intentioned

deception meant to

spare sensitive fools

from feeling the pain

of knowing the truth,

or the maddening

inability

of simply reading

a situation.

In these things I’m lost.

I am a man of

a secular faith,

a way of saying

I do not have faith.

I need proof of fact.

And I don’t have it.

and eternity:

a pregnant moment,

an instant of choice

life hangs on a thread

time becomes shadow

and we stand alone

you slice at my skin

with your cold daggers.

You think they hurt me?

Pain is not found there.

Unrequited love

is much more painful.

So come, do your worst,

harbinger of spring.

Your icy daggers

are but a shadow

of what I endure

alone, in my thoughts,

in my heart, each night.

that remain open

too long are exposed

to all the violence

the world can show them.

The winds of March whip

at tender petals.

April storms pummel

the stems of young growth.

Scorching rays beat down

in summer’s cruelty.

Autumn digs her graves;

winter mourns no one.

I have tended the

garden of my heart,

and only for you,

Brazilian flower.

I am the careful

gardener, and have

loved you many years.

Let me tend your heart.

when I am no more,

will you remember?

When I’m merely dust

and have blown away

will I still reside

in your memory?

Have my feet left prints

in the sands of the

gold, sunlit beaches

of your precious thoughts?

Or when I am gone

will it be as though

I were never here,

never lived at all,

and never loved you?

hunger to be filled,

forever denied;

the emphatic need

for intimacy.

The warmth of a hand

in your hand at the

end of a long day.

Waking to the face

that brightens your days.

Walking together

in wildflower blooms.

A long embrace when

the world’s crashing down,

the end of all things,

and this is the one

you’ve shared your heart with.

Longing for the one,

true intimacy.