The Oyster
You have forgotten,
how good the oyster tastes.It is stuck to the rock,
Covered in grime,
Battered by the sea,
It’s anchored posture
Clinging to the salt of the waves.You will not
remove it,
You will not
lift it to your tongue
You will not
imbibe it’s sweet,enduring intoxication.The sea will come and pass,
As the morning meets the day
Passing by the solitary oyster.
Im mourning two deaths today,
One that has been,
And one that could have entered my life,
He came into it so unexpectedly
A book, a coffee, a decision
There are moments in life
That could have been.
five hours away
its only a five hour journey,
that lies between me and you.
Its just one ticket away,
a nervous walk to a train station,
a tentatively placed shoe,
a nervously anticipated glance,
Just One journey of countless faces,
footsteps,
conversations.
one,one, anxiously anticipated journey
that I will never take.
I will not see you again
and I will die
dreaming of the journey.
In this moment
I have never missed you more than in the silence of this moment,
I lie here, spent and tired,
you are right beside me laughing,
you are smoking by the window,
you are catching my eye in the reflection of a mirror,
you take my hand on a bus ,
you watch my secret, exhiliarated smile,
I have never missed you more in the silence of this
fraught and forgetten
moment
I phoned you last night,
For once there were no tears,
For once no facade,
For once the three strangled words in my throat didn’t fight to escape.
The empty space of a hollow,lamented goodbye restrained.
You were painting last night,
Laughter filled your every pore,
You laughed with me,
And I remembered
the days when we would laugh.
They lied to me,
when they said I would forget your face,
They lied to me
when they said time heals all wounds
They lied to me
that I could love another.
its like a closed wooden coffin,
my love for you.
the nails have been hammered in its corners,
its door has been resolutely shut,
people have started to forget you were once there.
Its like a wooden coffin,
miles under the surface of grass
miles under the roots
But as the tide of our life’s relentless waves retreats
it is there,
in that wooden coffin.
