At the Dead of Night

  

Now I have to fight the days without her

without the feel of her skin

the radiance of her lips in the sun

without her lock of hair in my face

walking on the strand.

I have to forget everything she meant to me

try not to think about the memories

not to remember what she meant

when she said she loved me

and when she didn't.

I have to forget the tears and the doubt,

the pain throbbing behind the ribs.

I have to combat all these, and the rest,

the sleepless nights and the fact

that I would give everything –

everything for her, to have her back,

to see her smile one last time.

Now I have to fight the sorrow

the long days and the lonely nights

the remembrance of what she brought me

when I was nothing and down in the gutter

when she meant the world

Now that she means so much more than that.

Now I have to live without her laugh

without her dark pupils fixing me

first thing in the morning – her smile –

her smell – I could die for her.

God I long for her, to find her,

to live again and see the sun as it once was

what matters more than this?

Nothing. Nothing.

Every single day I have to fight,

every time I have to wake up

and go to work, live an ordinary life.

Every minute a pain boring through me

her smile a persistence in my sight.

Blurring everything, tinging every single thing.

I wish so many things, that we were closer

that I didn't have to open my eyelids.

That I could lose control and fly to her

across the deserts and the oceans

where she belongs, the place of my dreams.

Now she and I have to retrieve a little dignity.

She has suffered and must find peace

wherever it is – our paths meeting perhaps

one day – looking for repose

a haven where she would dwell

and sleep and live.

Now I have to fight the days without anything

to remind me of her, no token of love

no letter, nothing but ethereal images

mindscape of pain.

But I wouldn't trade these images

for all the gold in the world,

just for one smile across a platform,

she forever lost to me.

And perhaps at the dead of night

she will come to me in a dream

enshrouded in white flashes

taking my chin in her pale hands

and looking at me, mute and caring

and perhaps, at the dead of night,

loving.

And then I wouldn't have to fight

for I would know that pain is a friend

to learn lessons from,

not some fiend to be afraid of.

That her smile, her very breath

are godsent, that I have lived what

so many only dream of

at the dead of night

and never experience.

That all the beautiful things I have lived

with her, and in some way still do,

were real and that reality is all we have

all we crave and what we fear the most

for reality, at the dead of night,

is the only thing that matters more than us,

than what we may represent.

Now, at the dead of night, I think about her

and do not fear any darkness, nor pain.

And if perhaps some trace of melancholy

is bound to persist, at the dead of night,

then she shall come and smile at me,

relieving me from the vivid images

with a soothing and, perhaps, loving

hand.

And I will stop fighting.