POEM - One More Question

You were in my DMs the same day that

fresh lifeline I’d known came to a tired end

You’d once told me you thought love

should be free

And I asked if you still believed that

after the hard years apart we’d known;

not even sure of what you meant by ‘free’

Free could mean limitless and wild

Free could mean rootless and momentary

Free could even mean eventual shackles

And what it meant to me when you said it

could be something altogether different

from what you actually intended to convey

Lord knows I have always been the king

of misjudging a situation

But those words stuck

to my most secret hopes

like nearly nothing else had managed

It was a lot like hearing you admit

that God had had me on your heart,

and the weight of implication in that admission

which I couldn’t escape

It was why I assured you that I understood

completely, in spite of the reality that I did not

(and do not) believe in any god

And I meant every word I ever

wrote or spoke to you

There was no game I’d willingly play

with your innocence

You reminded me of myself;

the person I was before knowing the sky

could (and most likely would) fall

I pretended to be forgetful when I glimpsed

the true depth of your internal galaxy;

refusing to be the moon which collapsed

that reflective expanse upon you

But, as was already indicated, I’m often

a poor judge

I underestimated you by so much more

than a million miles

The universe needs no other name,

as far as I’m concerned,

so long as it has yours to utter

But look at me, getting reliably

ahead of myself

You clarified that a price tag on love

made plain that it wasn’t love being sold;

that love is expansive and understanding,

else it’s something valueless as gold

This comforted the broken thing I was

— just as you would come to comfort

the broken thing I was —

but your meaning was not

immediately registered

Admittedly, that took far too much time

“There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

In that moment, I knew the scars (on me)

could easily be the cracks (in me) once more

But that was my old-world mind

doing its outdated thinking

So I consented to introductions

with whoever you’d been hiding from me

in your proverbial closet

Now there are higher dimensions

within this happy collection of years

we assume we have left to share

For the both of you, I am beyond grateful

And for any greater love we encounter, I stand

ready to admit that there are dreams

which even my ridiculous imagination

has yet failed to conceive