Poetry Collection

Contrition of my Own

If I knew the things to say to clear my conscience and your worry,
If I knew the perfect string of thoughts that'd correct our saddened story,
If I knew where my hands would serve best to be upon your tear-stained cheek,
I would not need to write this poem, I would not have comfort left to seek.
It would come to me at once like second nature,
An instinct meant for primal love, the kind that enfeebles its maker in a flurry of penance;
What good is words when words don't hurt and words don't heal but actions serve their purpose by the thousands?
If a thousand words are meaningless then what hope do my actions have,
Actions yet misguided by your hurt.
My hurt.
Our hurt.
My fault.
It's in your heart,
The blame.
It's mine to bear.
It's what I get for doing what I did and yet I'm not too sure if I even did you wrong.
But I did.
I see it now, I did.
The yelling and the sobbing,
The sobbing and the pleading,
The pleading and the stifling,
The stifling and the needing to go back;
Back to where it all began, the nature of our faults.
Why do I resign my ghost when it's already locked up in a vault?
All I can do is watch my actions,
Clockwork at its worst,
Repeating in eerily perfect symmetry,
A rhyme within its verse.
I can't believe you stand me,
I can't believe you wouldn't,
I can't believe you love me,
Especially now that you shouldn't.
I'm not a tragic hero,
I'm a villain, a mistake.
But still your fingertips of silk,
Circles do they trace,
Upon my chest.
My heart in your grasp and yet I haven't the smallest scratch.
I wonder now, to take my vow,
Would I even have what with to stand?
To lift your opal veil,
And bear my bond onto your hand,
Would I even have the right to say that I understand,
What it is you love?
My oval face and spheric smile have little value on easel,
I won't pretend that I'm much of a fox—
Instead, I'm just a weasel.
But for all my lacking reasons to be loved by love as true,
I find that I believe it only when it comes from you.
To love you is to love the earth and all its profound glory;
A myriad of riches with jewels and gems within your heart, your eyes an endless quarry;
To love you is to love the love which lovers often do,
To love you is to know beyond a doubt you do too,
But sometimes I don't.
I think I do, I hope I do,
But then the creeping suspicions barge right in.
Creeping only in name;
Hunting me like game.
Can't care.
Don't.
Do.
Do you?
Who knows?
Apparently not us,
But everyone outside the house we built.
Front lawn through the back door,
Back channel treason, I suppose.
So I wrote this prose.
This distance that we've built,
So physical and real,
I reach out and stretch and break trying to crane my neck,
Just to see you.
But instead I have to miss you.
And all those times I tried to call your name,
I found it tangled in my throat.
So instead I wrote this message,
And I hope that by the end of it I have the courage to send it.
But I won't.
I'll leave it where you go when you leave me on my own,
Within me.