That First Day

I was 12 years younger than 32
It was the first time that I met you
Our eyes—they met—across that crowded café
…It was all the jazz, it was a perfect cliché.

They say don’t count chickens until your eggs hatch
They say your heart will just know your perfect match
I’ve been told it always happens when you don’t expect it to
And that if it’s meant to be, you’ll just know what to do

Well I have no chickens, and I love being free
And I don’t expect anything, so you shouldn’t trust me
So why did you call, and why do you stay?
And why have I seen you so many times since that day…

Tell me why my heart flutters so much when you’re near
Give me the name of this…exquisite fear
I don’t know what it is, I don’t know why
You’ve become so much of me, I can’t let it die

Your voice is beside me though you be not near
And every word you spoke to me, I hear crystal clear
You envelop my senses, and ensnare my mind
And everywhere I look, your presence I find

In the endless blue of the sky, the shine of the sea
I see your arms beckoning, your voice calling to me
From far away, and across’t barriers of time
Spinning my heart with the words of love’s rhyme

But it’s been too long, left a silence to deep
And my heart falls into faux death, like sleeping beauty’s sleep
Though I look for you always, you stay far away
And I’m left with mere memories of each perfect day

I grow hopeless, and helpless, days drift into years
And such a shell I’ve become, impossible are tears
Merely a husk of what I once was, when distant you weren’t
When everything was picture perfect—and now the pictures lay burnt

I am 12 years older than 32
My memories haunt, with each of them you
Our eyes haven’t met in 24 years
And since then I’m incapable, still, of tears

I refuse to eat poultry, cliché’s drive me mad
And every day of my life, I regret what we could’ve had
It did indeed happen when I never expected it to…
But destiny did everything it wasn’t supposed to do

I live far from a farm, and I hate being free
And that you can’t trust anything has been proven to me
Never again did you call, and you could no longer stay
And those memories still haunt me to this very day

But you taught me to live, and to laugh, and to care
And I lived a love that was, if anything, rare
I had it so shortly, but forever it shall be
My vision of heaven—the utopia for me

One thing I should mention, that never I said
Was when you laying dying, though love's never dead
And you kissed me and held me, and whispered goodbye
And I held you in that hospital, watching you die

Your breath was stolen, and mine was as well
And in that moment, I was thrust into hell
Your mouth grew slack, and your eyes grew dim
The only solace I knew, was that you were with Him

Once more my lips pressed to yours, now so cold
All I heard was your voice, of what I'd been told
That you loved me forever, and forever we’d stay
In that perfect moment of moments—when we met that first day.