A leaf falls from a mighty tree:
a mark of departure of she from he.
He opens a drawer and removes a frame
less boisterous and elegant than what it contains,
never able to do the photo justice,
always at a lack for what it wants: to aid.

A look, a soft, longing gaze
peering past young skin and through
to a place he had let her endeavor.
a place so deep, so dark, so new,
a tender layer encased in brawn:
defiled, soiled, explored only by she,
no one else before could find
what was so latent and pure in he.

And now a touch, a jittery scrape,
his sweaty fingers against the thin glass,
the largest barrier in between
what is now and merely the past.
The memory fading, darkening more,
breaking down bit by bit,
just as the leaves fall from the tree,
not for a purpose other than that
of the cruelty of time and mother nature’s wit.

A longing, a throbbing pain,
he knows he’ll never be the same.
He’s sealed his gates and locked his doors,
his stoicity a barrier, clogging his pores
worsening the wanting, driving the knife
deeper into the shards of his life,
a beating heart, a throbbing pulse,
an all too graceful and natural force.
Yet something so real, so tangible and here
it makes the longing disappear.
And he gets in touch with what she was,
a presence that’s shaking him just because
she dug so deep and left a hole
irreplaceable in its pull.
a longing for filler or something real
to stop the bleeding so he could feel
his longing lifted from his soul
and embrace what’ll make him whole.

But now he draws another breath,
and shakes of the cold fingers of death
that have already taken so much from he,
the key to his lock, this perfect being,
a woman who can still be seen
simply out the window of he
residing beneath this mighty tree
who has lost now near all its leaves
during a time that’s said to be
the longing.