Water Through The Trees

The sun greets me each morning and I wake feeling disconnected from its warmth. Shadows linger in corners as I reach out to touch my fingertips to my mirrored reflection.

Days have turned into weeks, years folding inward to months.

The only constant is the lake and the secrets it keeps for us.

Often I have considered revisiting the edge of summer waters where once we loved. But I am weak. I have seen the lake through the trees and am frightened. I fear if I visit those shores, the memories of you won't be waiting for me.

Your death has caused me to have a mournful amnesia. I no longer recall what life was before you. The girl I was while we were together is now gone forever.

I should have stayed with you when you called for me. Youth made of me a fool.

Fingertip memories still haunt my wrists, reminding me your touch as I tried to walk away. I struggled not to tell you how I was simply reacting to circumstances for which I had no control. I struggled not to return to the comfort of your collapsing arms.

I was too young to realize the ramifications of my cowardliness and so, I said nothing. I left you there, as your eyes searched the water for answers, even as your voice called the name I will never again allow a man to call me. I lost you and my identity there on those banks.

My steps were the beacon of desertion, though my bewildered heart lingered there with you. God, how I wish now that I would have met your eyes with my own one last time. I should have smiled at you as reassurance that the "4 ever" we wrote was the forever we meant.

Tortured by "what could have been" scenarios, regret plagues my mind.

Hectic paces of life incite short span reprieves from longing. When again you visit me during restless slumbers, I feel like I have betrayed you. I awake crying too often, as the remembrance of your voice harasses me in ghostly callings. For me, there is no escape.

"Your heart won't let you forget me and neither will I," you said once. I hate that you were right.

Violence stole from us the opportunity for me to right this wrong. Pistols shot any chance I had to apologize for killing myself in this process. I pray now you knew I was unable to retrieve from you my love.

They say that you have no grave marker to show where your body lies. I have not, nor will I ever visit that place to know this for certain.

I prefer to instead think that you wait beside the water's edge waiting for me. Muscular outline of the shoulders which once held me with ease shadowed in midnight suns. I stand behind you, your eyes liftly slowly. I see again the mischievous glint in your eyes which first intrigued me.

I hear your call, but can never seem to get close enough to reach you. Perhaps I finally should turn to walk away from you, as once I did before. But, I am can not do so, not as long as I am still able to see the water through the trees.