Tales of a Love That's Passed

Beneath bed sheets gone cold with absence,
lies a secret of equal warmth.

Though their shape is disturbed yet again,
they are not the same.
I hearken to faded memories
and reminders of the slight, empty life
I now drift through.

Nothing is as it was before you.

Pieces are left for others to put back together
and still you remain a silhouette in the distance,
watching from your tall safe-house on a shifting horizon.
Everything is twisted and changing
and my eyes refuse to acclimate.

Rapunzel’s hair has been cut
by her fabled Prince Charming.
Though he also courts Cinderella and Snow White
and a thousand other worthy women,
he dallies
to kiss and pirouette with his so-called beloved
if only to count the steps they take
leading up to the grand finale,
where he sweetly forsakes her.

With the passage of time,
the sweep of hair you severed from me
will blossom anew.
And perhaps I will again throw down a rope of hair,
as the legends say,
instead, for a peasant.

The sheets are not warm,
but their coldness will no longer remain
in my heart or in my bones.
I no longer lie awake.
I no longer think on opportunities squandered.

When Sleeping Beauty rises from drug-induced sleep,
her eyes will take in a world of beauty and splendor
even if there is no handsome prince to kiss her awake.