Refraction.

Regret.

I'd had an opportunity or two, I suppose,
In the precious few moments that I had you alone.
Hours had been spent, thinking of the words -
How to tell you that I've fallen so deeply,
So softly; how to explain that the timing is so wrong
But I'd want nothing more than to
Taste your smile; intertwine my fingers with yours;
To have the chance to be close enough
For your brilliant wit to bring a smile to my face
Each and every waking day.
How I longed to show you the poems I'd wrote,
To confess - at last - to my sins. I should not have fallen,
I know, and yet I did. I fell a little more
Each time I saw you, every time you laughed,
And the fact that I'll never know if you felt it too
Is a thorn in my side - when I think I'm finally free,
I feel that twinge again. It is regret, I think -
Time has passed, I have had other loves,
And yet I still yearn to be near you again.
Maybe I could find you, but perhaps not:
It's been too long, and as for the clever words I'd be hoping
To say... They'd slip from my mind
As my eyes met yours. I recall their beauty too well,
And it stuns me still - the intensity of that pale blue,
Somehow detached but still warm.
I found a sort of safety there: a safety, and yet a fear -
The wisdom, the kindness, the humour they held...
I understood it all too well,
And now that I shall never dive any deeper, I wonder
What I would have found - what beauty, what wonder,
What heart.
Now I may only speculate, trying not to dwell
On what we may have had;
On what you are, for I saw something in you
That could draw forth a smile on the darkest of days -
Those days still haunt me, and I have never met anybody else
Quite like yourself; I fear I never shall again.
Even if there were somebody with all those divine eccentricities,
It would not be the same.
This regret will not cease, unless I somehow find you
And tell you someday.
Unless fate crosses our paths once again, I shall write here
That I love you, and I shall glance back at it
Through teary eyes
On the days where I forget that there is good in this world;
On the days where I feel that there is nothing to live for.
I will hold this space in my heart for all that you taught me,
And pray that I tell you some day,
Or at least that you see all I have written, and realise
How much you meant; how you saved me time and time again.