Waning, And Why – A Poem

Sometimes I remember your hands;

they’re nice hands, aren’t they?  Boyishly large, the bones abstract sketches under the skin

nervous hands, nervous like whatever it is your face does when you think about the future.

Sometimes I remember being flung across a bed, alone and itching childishly 

with want.  Thinking

my soul feels sick.  My soul feels sick when 

I’m not with him.

Sometimes I remember every primal moment, whenever your skin was on my skin

was in my sleep, made fuses of my nerve endings, made a windblown rose of my heart

and my ribcage the only thing that held me together besides every thought

every warm and waning thought of you.  

You.

Then I remember how you don’t look at me 

the way I remember you.  

How longing is my bitter wine, how my heart 

folds its arms in your face, how eyes I once fell in turbulent and perfect love with

now look right past me, as though I were a scorned thing 

the stars spat out.  

I remember, and I

understand, finally

why humanity has almost eaten itself off the face of the earth.  

Daisy Harris