I saw you smile, I heard you laugh for the first time today.
Your radiance, ravishing, a hurricane enraged with joy,
always raging, estranged from me,
and your laughter and your grinning and your happiness,
and all that maintains and contains
your truth and your mystery and your wonder,
is simply a complexity of poetry that is majestic and magic,
fed to me in small meager portions,
rich enough to cleanse my pallet,
and fulfilling enough to fill me with the morsels
of your broken love.
Every breath that you inhale
and every breath that you exhale,
every short giggle that descends from your lips
into the open vast sea of my fantasies and memories,
is a sonnet, a beautiful verse of longing
intermixing in intervals with the sounds and the echoes
of the hopeless din of the painful shouting
from our generations, from the generations that once existed,
and from the generations we have yet to foster.
I hear the others, lifting their voices,
hoping to be heard and recognized,
but your laughter is set apart from their cyclical
screaming recycled through their unsettled debates,
for your laughter is not critical but naturally nurturing,
and your laughter is something to be cherished,
your laughter quieting down my inner nerves
and soothing the demons within me,
granting me heaven and extinguishing the fires
of my internal hell.
Your laughter, a sweet sound like church bells ringing
bringing together my past and your future,
a melody of well-rehearsed notes played studiously
and quickly and slowly,
swallowing our spirits in the meandering black-hole tunnels of the present,
a lush cinematic score played over the credits of my early life’s ending,
an introductory anthem ushering in my new life’s beginning,
closing the gap between the start and the conclusion
of who I am, of who you are,
of what we have and of what we make,
of what we will become.
Though your laughter is a gift from the gods,
the tears that you weep are loved just the same,
the tears that you shed are just as incredibly enamoring.
I am entranced by both your despair and your jubilance,
your anxious disposition and your loving essence,
inspired by your highest highs and lowest lows,
I am broken up by your perfection putting me in place,
I am repaired in your brokenness correcting my fallibilities.
It is not my wish to change you,
because your inconsistent moods consistently change me,
and I only want to love you.
I only want to hold you in my arms,
feel your words swirling within my ears,
grasp your tears within my eyes,
entrap myself in your laughter,
your smile never letting me go,
your dignified sadness brighter than the faint light
of my heart,
wanting you closer, needing you closer,
letting me sink forever into the tumultuous currents
of your beautiful blinding darkness.
Tyler Willis