Fragments

As I take your cold hand in mine,
And stare into the emptiness,
I know that I may never see you again,
Though this is how I will always remember you:
Your long winter coat concealing the body
That never was a mystery to me,
Not even the first time my hand,
Came to rest on your bare hip,
Smooth gray curves in the moonlight;
Your eyes unfocused under knitted brows,
Contemplating not the windswept landscape before us,
But the inner turmoil you keep securely contained,
Behind a meshwork of steel and nerve;
Your voice as you almost sing the words to me,
“We are people who still really feel,
And that is why we are here now;”
Your lips dry and cracked and slightly parted,
As if you were about to speak again,
The words stolen and swept out to sea.

The rest of you is just fragments,
Scenes from another life I probably
Dreamed while sleeping on a train.
The real is inseparable from the desired,
And my future is fraught with imagination.

You release my hand and withdraw
Without a sound; magnets under my skin
Involuntarily pull me toward your mass,
But I anchor my feet and do not turn my head.
I am left with the cry of gulls and the music
Of the internal, eternal struggle of opposites,
Pulling columns down as they wage their war,
Somewhere deep in my frozen, laboring lungs.

My eyes close and I try to remember,
Another time, one I am sure once existed,
Where softness was also a non-tactile feeling
And strength was a word we shared,
But now it is just fragments.