Away from You

by Ashley J Smith
(Namibia)

This is the saddest poem I’ll shall ever write because it takes me away from you – it says goodbye to you my love… to us.
Here where I loved you… beneath pinholes mapped in the night sky…
Here where our love budded and bloomed and fed itself on immaculate freshness… twisting open our souls to linger and feel the soft inviting soil of love’s first planting…
I loved you then… completely though I have made mistakes - imperfect perfection – complete and without end… I treasure each step we took… each moment we fashioned with trembling hands to last… each time you said you loved me and gave yourself to me – your soul, the most profound gift I have unwrapped with these hands…
The nights we hastened into each other… tangling our hearts so that they now tear and bleed as we pull apart…
I love you still though since you left me alone here I have pondered whether we ever loved the same…
But that contemplation does not make it easier or more difficult…
These are the saddest words I’ve ever impose on myself because they take me away from the dream I tried to carry when you left;
And even though I walked for many, many miles my strength failed me and I cannot but lay it down here my love…
And there is no one left with me to pick it up and hold it for just a little while until I am able to rest and continue on…
I wanted to keep it alive… Perhaps just for another day… perhaps a week... a just a bit longer so when you came back you would find it safe and in my care…
But if truth be told it died before I laid it down this day… It was never meant to be kept alive by one, but two… How foolish of me…
How stubborn and naive to believe that I could do such a thing? Love enough for two… I’m smiling with tears in my eyes… love is nothing if not bittersweet…
Should I die with the dream of us?
Would that be penance enough for you? Should I lie beside this dream, never to wake again?
You knew such a thing could not happen…
I have to go on…
And yet this is the saddest moment in my life for I have reached the end of my lies…
I can no longer convince myself that there is hope when even she has convinced me otherwise…
So I told myself I want to bury our dream here where I loved you… within this bruised and bleeding heart… beneath the memories we built to last… beside the dead, dull feeling which came to abide with me the day you moved on…
Goodbye…

By Ashley J Smith