Don't go out in silence

She leaves one full moon
one cold winter afternoon.
I hug her less than I wish.
I hug her more than anyone else I
have ever had to let go.

I have left quite a few people
go without a word.
I was never taught the
protocol for farewells.
There is a moment

before two paths diverge,
a season sets.
You hope people can read
your love in things other than
words.

(To Julie Ana Abreu)

Dear Universe

I am delighted and encouraged
to have been offered such a generous opportunity to fall in love,
especially while trying to get home after a long day of work
when I am at my weariest, most uncomely
and doubtful I can be noticed in the crowd.

However, after having considered your offer carefully,
I have decided that at this point I cannot accept it given the fact that I am currently
in love with an intricate someone else, who takes one hundred percent of my heart and resolution,
thus making it substantially impracticable for me to undertake a new project at the moment.

I do thank you for your thoughtful consideration
and I wish you the best continued success.
Shall our paths cross again in the future under changed circumstances,
I would be happy to be considered for a new venture.

Yours truly,

K.

The biggest lie

"She developed the most effective method of lying. She stayed close enough to the truth so that one could never be sure. She knew two other methods also -- either to interlard her lies with truth or to tell a truth as though it were a lie. If one is accused of a lie and it turns out to be the truth, there is a backlog that will last a long time and protect a number of untruths.” 

― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

I wasn't thinking it.
you are right.
I will love you for life.
I'm grateful you crossed my way.

I understand your motives.
It's fine.
I'll tell you why.
I won't miss you when you go away.

I forgive you.
You're a good guy.
I'm not going to cry.
I'll think about you every day.


(Cuyahoga County Public Library has been sending writing prompts to my e-mail for the month of April, and this is my response to today's: write a 12-line poem in which each line is a lie. Other than the John Steinbeck's words about lying at the top, Hitler's ones also came immediately to my mind: "they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods." Adolph Hitler,  Mein Kampf)

Halves

What is the reason that I hear your voice so far
in the past and it still causes my heart to ache?

I was the one who chose
how this story would be told,

where on Earth
each of us should settle down

and start over, as half, awry souls.
I don't regret it.

Swimming

My father was born exactly
one year after his town
came into existence.

A beloved son of progress,
he was raised by an aunt
because while his busy mother
left on a train headed north
before he was two,

his old man never lived to get old.

Under the direct sunlight in his
whimsical town

my father, a child, worked in the coal mines
and helped power a locomotive
he wouldn't be allowed to ride.

He was around seven
when he first thought of an alternative way
to escape:

by swimming down the river.

He was to rest on the banks when he
stopped feeling his arms,
live from fruit collected
out in the sticks and
sleep under the stars.

That would be his freedom.

It was one soultry afternoon after work
he learned how to swim,
by swallowing a small fish alive
in the shallow waters of the São Franciso river.

Everyone knew that was the only way.

I was seven myself
when he taught me everything
there was to know about swimming,
just in case.

I was excused from the fish.

(Shared with dVerse Poets)