In the Darkness, on The Longest Night

Strange is the shape that intimacy takes,
sitting there in the darkness,
as the joyful waves of music wash over us.

I sit, with my legs angled away from you,
as if to say to all sitting in the darkness,
"see, she is not mine... she is another's".

Yet as I lean away, I want to lean in the other direction,
like a moth drawn to the flame in the darkness
towards the heat of your thigh and your breath.

The brush of your forearm as we silently share
that midwinter music, there in the darkness
made all the more exquisite in your company.

You lean your face into the nape of my neck,
your hot breath like a lover in the darkness
and whisper your shared secret:

"The concertina player was my lover... we played croquet".

Pain - Self inflicted

Is all that I have built for four years precariously balanced on the head of a pin? Can I hope to move it onto a flat and level place without it all tumbling to pieces?

And in the process of moving it off the head of that proverbial pin, I can't help but hurt people that have been closest to my heart.

Should I have ever built this life on that pin, or should I have ruthlessly bulldozed it all down several years ago, and now be two years into the re-building process?

Night Thoughts in Winter

Walking a slippery, uneven and unknown path, in the darkness of night,
I can see the beauty of a myriad of crisp and glittering stars,
and fullness of the moon, round and luminous and curved.

The moon like the hips of a woman that I would want to hold
in the middle of a winters' night,
nestled so close that her heat would almost scorch,
her breath slow and regular and completely at ease,
her heart pulsing against her sternum, and up my fingertips.

But I'm walking outside through the winter night,
all that beauty channeled through my eyes to my brain,
not through my fingers to my heart,
Wondering how many moons might wax and wane,
before I feel a pulse,
or my brain tells me to walk into the night,
and I listen.