To Love No More

I lifted you into my heart
But one arm was missing
As single wing and one handed
I carried you inside
All the while, you pointing at
My lost absent limb…
You told me you’d love me
If I could find that one misplaced part
The part that would then
Make me whole
I looked into tomorrow
And searched through the past
But my arm had reached out
For something beyond my ability to see
I could still feel the numbing sensation
Of pain
Where the arm had previously
Been attached
The vibration of loss
Now prosthetic for all that was severed
You pitied my deformity as I hid
My eyes
As best I could with only one hand
Telling me the fault was mine
For always reaching beyond what I
Could know or see…
And with your final stroke of malice
You left me further disabled
Climbing back outside a wish I knew
Was never to be mine…
When you left you found the old world
Different than the one you thought you knew
A desert of frozen stone with a black sky now
Surrounded the stillness of your abandoned love…
As you hesitated to turn around and
Reenter my world
The one that just a moment ago you had
Admonished and left for good
A lone arm reached out and closed the door
Behind you
Leaving you abandoned in a sea of loneliness
And despair
  —to love no more

(Villanova Pennsylvania: August, 2016)
Dedicated To Lisa Wynn in the next AOP.