I Longed for the Story of You

A Poem

Photo by Gaman Alice on Unsplash

i wish i could page through your heart
as if every beat were a phrase or a poem —
anything to know you in the perfect language
of words, so many words, in the undercurrent

i thought you were so easy to place —
an archetype, a trope, a persona in metaphor —
but you surprised me in your shifting ways
like you were an image rippling in water

i wish i could have showed you my pages —
every one splattered by thoughts of you,
the ideas of who you were scattered
to a kind of forever i could never grasp

i thought i was the one who could paint
the colors of the world and all its meanings
into your gray-scale way of life —
but you’d never let me close

i wish the watercolors in my brain
could have made the difference
between what was truth in doses —
and what was only wishful thinking

but we’ll never see the destination