love like the lord of the rings

It sits out there waiting for me.

every time i take it out, I'm forced to put it away a little differently.

I apologize for how often I have picked it up.

I said I would be right back.

 And I walked faster.

He was sinking into hard wood floors.

His paint brushes were all hardened over.

He complained about everything but the weather.

Her sewing machine rings in the background,

attaching sticks to plastic light,

attaching him to her.

I’m where I always am; waiting.

My hands go up slowly to rub my eyes,

rub it down, away, 

back into my skull, or the insides of my eyelids. 

Apply black ink to my waist to 

steal you the illusion

that I have in fact improved.

I bend backwards and forwards,

I lift my legs this way and that,

I turn my wrists all around,

I crack my knuckles

I work on becoming a doctor and a trapeze artist. 

As she sews together pretty parts and

waits for him to tell her

that he loves her like the Lord of the Rings.

I didn’t ask for that, I asked for care, asked for awareness, asked for consideration. 

But never mind

because I love him now and it’s thin air. 

Besides the impossible present, I still crave flawless belief in that childhood romance.

It doesn’t really exist, which is what they all wanted me to have.

What I wanted to keep.

But age was pouring where water doesn’t rise.

I can’t get back to it; after you tore up my obsession, made it understood, forgettable.

I want to find those moments, before you;

when I threw the treasured recess soccer ball behind my head

and screamed his name, wanting to make sure we spent that 

holy thirty minutes of grass and asphalt together.

Just like her and her sewing machine and his rare letters.