the cusp of wondering

I keep your chair warm with my loneliness.
(The fire burned out so long ago
that the flames have turned to ash
even in my memory.)

The grandfather clock still ticks,
but never proclaims the right time.
The flowers in the vase have created their own autumn
of brown petals on the table.

The tea is always cold here.
Bookmarks become cramped,
always stifled between the same pages.

Everything bears the stains of waiting:

the yellowing piano keys,

the lamps and surfaces now grey with dust,

and most stained of all: the demilunes under my eyes.
They are a shade of purple that can only be achieved by combining
the blue of sadness and the cranberry of wistful patience,
stirring gently,
and thinning with a handful of watery sighs.

I miss the forests of ink in your mind,
I miss your fingers sailing the tangled sea of my hair.
But most of all, I miss not being forever on the cusp of wondering:
forever waiting, frozen for something
that may never return.

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I don't have much to say about this piece, except I wrote it a couple weeks ago and it's one of the better things I've written in the past 6 months. The self-portrait is about 2 years old. In fact, another photo from that 'session' can be found somewhere on this blog. I figured out how to blur parts of the picture, so of course I went for my face. ;)

I stayed up past 3 AM listening to my demons nattering, and have been in a proper foul mood today. But I am now in possession of a flapper dress (vintage, though not from the 20s), a new bio of Freddie Mercury is coming in for me at the library, and I found free sheet music for Fleetwood Mac's 'Songbird', so perhaps today won’t be a total wash after all.

('Songbird' is one of my favourite songs at the moment.)