the untouchable face
impenetrable memory
the photo clutched
by your desperate fingers.
Nearly said, "No thanks"
because I almost had too much pride.
I almost became that figment
of ethereal beauty
that every man holds on to,
but can have only one real life interpretation of.
Pink lips,
a slow motion memory of our eyes meeting
of the heat of our bodies
of the touch of my
index middle and ring fingers
brushing your undeserving cheek.
You wanted me that badly, once,
because I was not yours,
but just an unwieldy,
enigmatic marriage of what went before
with what you thought I could never be again.
What was I but an objectification
of beauty and truth,
which you abandoned in the parking lot
on that chilly January afternoon,
forcing smiles in the pit of my misery
that I had not been enough to have been kept
in the first place?
Subtly edging my way
back into reality
and out of your fantasy world
was the best and worst
move I ever made.
To no longer be yearned for
in the same way,
but in a more familiar desiring
what one has as opposed to what
they cannot get
is not inferior.
Just different.
