POEM - Aladdin Loves Ariel

There are things you just don’t say out loud

But I, nonetheless, think of saying them every day

Somewhere in the back of my mind

—once you peel away all the years

of what we let time do to us—

you are still so much more

than the one who got away

You’re an underground river

with a name which doesn’t

do you justice in the ears of Earth’s masses;

a name so common that most people

would never guess at what you really are

For, to me, your name is the perfect sound

You’re the deep stream I have drawn from

to keep myself alive

And even when I thought I’d lost you forever,

you somehow sustained me

I cannot thank you enough

Nor can I give back what little of you I used,

or change that I failed to root myself

on your shores

But I am eventually going to be ashes

which want nothing more than to dance

in your steady current

So why bother pretending that my life is honest,

when it’s a death-wish I hold dearest?

From the moment we started having moments,

I have known why me heart ever cared to beat

in the first place

And I have felt you like autumn winds

washing over me after decades

of stifling summer sun

I have thought about you daily

since the hourglass tossed us to pieces

And when I, one day, lay dying,

I will weep if your absence is all that remains

I love you much the same as this universe

of ours loves stars

But some things…

you just don’t say out loud