Adventures in Poetry [Part 3]: Forever Companion

Forever Companion:

She has awakened a certain loneliness that has laid dormant and undisturbed.

It is a Phantom that haunts me in the quiet places.

It is not fast and does not chase me, and yet I am forever pursued.

When I stop running for a moment to catch my breath, it is upon me!

I have made great strides to eliminate the silent stalker.

I have surrounded myself with love. Not easy love-shallow and fleeting but with love withstanding, divine, covenanted, refined.

I thought I had won. How clever am I! I thought I dispelled my Forever Companion that visits me in my sleep.

“Curse you, leave me be, go back to where you came from. Why has the woman brought with her such an unwelcome guest as you?”

It Speaks:

Be still and listen to what I have to say.

Be quiet and be drawn into my embrace.

It is true that I have wounded ten-thousand but I have lost none.

My wound does not harm, it may burn, but it does not harm, and is given with a kiss.

I could be your tender lover, more satisfying than the women who provoke me.

But how poor you have treated me – never once have you offered me your cup to drink or your bed to lay.

In your desperate place you labeled me alien and called me intruder, kicked to the curb with no where to go.

You never imagined something like me, as big as the sky and as vast as the ocean could have a rightful home right here in your chest.

It is not I that haunts you, your Forever Companion, but the possibility of you.