Echoes of More

The poetry I wrote
For Decades
Beginning as young woman of 14
words crafted together
scribbled across pages
of notebooks
bits written on scraps of paper,
with a few stray napkins from a diner

I carried them
Across time and from
One end of the country to the other
For decades as well

Love letters,
mixed in,
words trying to recapture
and convey
those too few
scattered moments
when you found me
 asleep

Sometimes I might catch an echo
though during the day,
an echo of you
in a smile,
the way someone cocked their head
to one side,
a certain lilt and tone in a man's laugh,
the way he said my name,
or how he spoke to me

Pages
and hours
and carafes of ink,
attempting to gather
just a few right words
out of the fountain of many


That I might
say clearly
the emotion,
the feeling
of  HOME

The expression of
that sigh of relief
in the meeting
you there again

And every so often
there would be a day
some how I knew
you were O.K.

I didn't need to worry
quite so much
IF
you were happy
if you were smiling, or laughing
Or loved

There would be a day
when both of us
just seemed "good"
a practically tangible fabric
of the air on those days

Those days meant
you WERE
WE were synched up
echoing each other back

But then too,
there would be days...
I would wake up
and miss you
like you were someone
who had slept beside me
for years
and was suddenly just
GONE

Or days I could FEEL
this urgency
inside my heart
my soul
because I just KNEW
you were NOT ok

Those usually were the days
letters and poems
half started novels
began...
the missing you,
and worrying for you

And for many years
I bought into
other people's ideas
f who and how
love should come into my life

Until I realized
I realized that while I loved
other men
there were elements
within them allthat were the same

I realized there
had been days
even with a lover in my bed
and love in my heart
I missed you

I realized I never did stop looking
for you in the faces
of every crowd

I realized
that the thread
which connected
the men I loved
was the echo
of  YOU

Let me not be
misunderstood here...
The men I took, though rarely,
into my bed I loved,
I loved fully
and I treated it as though
they were the only one

I adored their own portions,
separate and often adjacent
to yours,
I dove into the variances of who they were
with enthusiasm and appreciation for it

I loved and I sought to fully understand
Each of them
for two reasons

One, they deserved to be loved like that
Two, who I am
when I love
is not half in
and half out

All this precisely because
I had my moments
with you
and every time you faded away
into the daylight again
I always
always
always cried

I would wake up
from a place of
complete joy,
absolute love,
and you were...
gone again

Just gone
face shrouded in a fog,
leaving me to fear
I might walk by you
in the crowd,
and maybe never know

And because you
so easily
left my side,
I so easily found myself
without you once again

I knew how quickly
someone you care for can just
be taken away
because our moments no matter how beautiful
were never long enough

So I loved,
I loved like I could lose them
at any moment
because I did know

I did know a different kind of love,
I did know what losing him was like
more frequently than I would have liked to

until that one day
I realized
all the ways loving
someone else was enough,
and was not

It was not a matter of not wanting to love,
not appreciating someone,
not being able to love,
or not enjoying their affection,
and it was not being afraid to love
though I thought so for a long time

It was deciding...
deciding echoes are not enough,
it was understanding
it never was
and that is the why I never married

Where I am now
is about finally
being really honest
with myself,
whether anyone else
could even begin to understand

I will always be searching
faces in crowds,
I will always hope
when my head hits the pillow I will see you
while I sleep

I will always somehow
in some way
be reminded that you ARE
and you always were
for me

I could hold this all
close to my chest
I could wear it like some
wounded heart badge of honor
or suffering

Or...
I could do in part what I always did do
I loved you,
I hoped for you,
I prayed for you,
and not just so you might find me,
but so you might be happy

And it ad always made my heart happy
to know you were out there
someplce, under the same sky,
that someone was making you smile
at least sometimes,
because you are my favorite

And the other part
is perhaps not to wait the way I did,
as if loving you might only happen
if you were in the same room

I have ime left
in this life,
not as much as I once had,
but time
and I know myself well enough to know
a lover is not necessarry to love or to be happy

I also know
myself well enough
to know
only
you
will
do