I KEEP YOU

I keep you quilted,

I keep you soft

and latticed

against my cheek

when I am sleeping,

I keep your ghost

as a restless pet,

I keep you.
I keep you.

Pressed like

beautiful wildflowers

between

the folded pages

of my unraveling mind.
I keep sacred

the snowglobe

memory of you.

I shake and rattle

and watch

the falling snow

and remember you

as you used to be,

before you disappeared

back into the recesses

of surrendered time,

before you disappeared

back into the stranger

you once were,

back into the shadows,

of the eventual surrender

of finite affairs.
yet, infinitely,

and inexplicably,

I keep you

as mine,
I keep you.

I keep you.
in the dark

nebulous hours

of night,

when you are gently sleeping.

I think of you softly

at 3 a.m.,

innocently curled in your bed,

beneath the blankets

I know so well.
I slide under the sheets,

drowning in the waves

of lavender blue

and imagine your dark eyes,

flickering

with your lostboy dreams.

In those hours,

I am closer to you,

than in any single moment

of your waking life.

I cradle you in moonlight

and candlelit memories,

comforting myself

in the way it used to be,

when you served me

your beautiful tongue of roses

and that sly mischievous grin.

Always, the thorns were hidden,

but I was never

afraid to bleed for you,

pricking myself

upon the stem

of your cascading lies,

was never to high a price to pay

for the sacredness

of a rapturous hour

( upon hour)

spent lingering

with you

in the insatiable bed

of our delicious sins.
It is the thought of you now,

that taunts me.

It is the thought of you,

untouched and unchanged,

unmarked and unphased at all,

that threatens to drown me

in an abyss of grey.
I keep you.

I keep you.
and you let me go.

so easily,
You never even visit my grave.

nothing remarkable,

nothing memorable about me,

for you to save.
You left me to the wolves.

You left me to fight my way back

from the edges of nothingness.

You left me with only the voices

inside my head,

repeating your silent goodbyes
you left me bruised

with fingerprints.
you left me

with unexplained bones.

and stained

with passionate kisses
you left me for dead.
and made me choose life.
and for always,
I keep you.

I keep a part of you.
safe and warm,

nestled deep inside

the secrets

of my earthen bed.