I Was Promised Freedom

I was promised freedom,
When we parted seasons ago,
The weathers have come anew,
But you remain.

The grey curls of memories,
Seep into my present,
Wispy, smoky, mannerless,
As if to mock all cries of
Carpe diem!

I live for the moment;
No, I don't,
I lie quite well actually,
And draw tapestries without you,
With the expert forgetfulness,
That you once fell in love with,
For I was adorable, wasn't I?
Through your eyes, I always was.

And yet in forgetting you,
I make my tapestries with holes.

Your empty silhouettes haunt me
With the icy grip that the warmth
Of the million colorful threads
Can never purchase.

I drown in your whispers,
And the soft music of your laughter
That my heart stashed away
With the seriousness
Of an architect visited by visions.

Visions of the future we built together,
One joke at a time,
One silence at a time,
Locked eyes to dictate
The landscape that should follow
That lifetime
That we worked on with gentle hands,
Memories crafted with practiced love;
Their unborn children,
Possess me
Like a madman.

I rave and foam and froth behind the masks,
Of laughter and polite posture
That the world demands to see
Lest my rain should drown them too.

And I drown and drown,
And grasp at feeble straws,
And find echoes of your fine angles,
In some foreign geometries.

But they never fit the tapestries
I wove for you.

I must burn these tapestries,
Mustn't I?
And in losing them I might find
The freedom I was promised,
Before I knew I must exorcise
Not just just who you were,
But what you made of me.


Image Source: Jessica Rimondi