MAN

This is to my great Dane.  To my almond joy, my brown boy.  My peach, my lust, my wonder.  This is for everything that I gained, heady, titillating, exaggerated as it was in my youth, uncontrollable; and for everything I am poised, barely balanced, to lose.  The horror.

This is for us, two sun-eyed, star-crossed lovers.  We saw this country, untamed and wild; we saw our lives, splayed before us, entwined softly, the strings touching, flitting as they looped, caught and fell back to one-another again and again.  The knot seemed impossibly tight, the yarn, our minds, thoughts, frayed, the fibers nearly indistinguishable.  Les deux enfants, we wandered together, perpetually paired, down jutting banks, through tight sea grasses.  We walked right up to the edge and saw magenta waves in the salty waters; we climbed peaks, scrambling over rocks, our skin ragged, dirty as our breathless banter.  We ate like princes though we were paupers, glinting plates set before glowing eyes, smiles, and the cheapest bottle of wine... Yes we would like some bread please, and also some cake.

This is for you, my best friend.  I ache, weighted limbs, heavy heart, in this ocean of bed; my apologies lost in the tides of blankets, unused, drowning me, oh downy reminders of a better heat source!  I want to play.  What games we had!  Let us romp through fields again, bright bocci balls in hand.  Let us wrestle (let me win!) and run between trees, taking pictures, brilliant shadows, sweet candies, a mere taste of our two years.

But what are words? Futile devices.  Something is lost in translation; the fissure between thought and expression is infinite, leaving only cuss words and bitter remarks on our tongues as we swallow (how repulsive, how crude!), ringing in our ears as the fights fade.  Better to leave with the love.  Take it with you, pack it, one hundred suitcases full, the most precious gem, priceless pearl.  Hide it, tuck it away. polished, to admire occasionally, a reflection, rosy in the gleaming surface.  You see two faces, beaming, rays.

This is all for you to recall, my cherub, my moon, in dim dreams, elongated alleyways of potent impressions.  Not this script, sightless signs, but these images, what happened, delicately imprinted on your beautiful brain.  This is for us to remember what once was, and perhaps, world willing, what will be once more.