I Wonder Why

When I ask you for your hand,
will you run away, let my chest expand
with painful breath, borne with foreboding
drip-edged red from distress, so cold a scolding
heart, drunk with disaster,
patched together with the poorest quality plaster.

Will you give me your body’s life,
as I gave you mine, or will you take flight
while I stay and fight, for an inevitable loss
and losing battle, cracks darkened and filled by moss
where tulips and roses no longer inhabit,
while you lie in a forest, heart in hand, fearing I might grab it
with my cold fist, let you writhe slowly
and pale and sweat, wondering why me
on the plight of imagined death,
dying with those two words on your last breath.

Where will you be when you realise
that such intentions were never in my eyes.
When you’re too far out to see,
the soul that reflects back signalling you and me
and all our defined happiness,
in our moments of unequivocal gladness,
in which your eyes teemed
with the heart worn so freely upon your sleeve.

When will I ever see you again,
to show you how much my hand bleeds for your hand
and how my clocks stopped moving long ago,
when you left and my heart shook with that delivering blow
that rendered time dormant, on hold
until you return to warm batteries, to end the winter’s everlasting cold.