Tuur Verheyde
Lies in Longing
Updated: Oct 3, 2022
For M.
I
It is spring
And infatuation’s wistful
Breath curls itself around
My restless brow. Seasonal
Scenes offer themselves
Like spells eager to be
Cast.
Sunset on the train;
Acrylic cyan smothering
Scarlet, spires and mills gilded
By a bloodshot brush.
Then out, catching the rising
Chitter of birdsong sailing
Across long leisurely strands
Of dusk—funny how this simmering
Sound seeps in so strongly now
Only to become background buzz
Once the heat has settled.
Then walking across well-known
Ways, inhaling the evening
Air, thick with blossom’s insistent
Tang.
The box world of winter
Lockdowns cracks and folk
Come out, plodding through
The warm light, sipping sweet
Memory fog, its fizz fragrant like
Feast-air in days of sweet inertia.
The call of spring bubbles
Like a hex, ready to ensnare
With songs of longing, perhaps
This time to be fulfilled.
I am fearful of its promise
And its lies.
II
We meet in the watchful company
Of corpse-like geese. A brief birthday
Drink between the bustle and the bloom.
Despite your arduous toil,
You are arrestingly effervescent.
I hang on your every word,
Your voice, magnetically mellifluous,
Your passion infectious like
Like a disruptive dream, its lucid
Holler beckoning in blistering colour;
Your smile sweltering like
The heatwave’s rumbling swoon;
Your skin and brow glistening
In the dreamy afternoon; your mind
Humming with elegant endowments,
All impossibly bewitching.
I look into your pale blue eyes
And see deep wells of jade green,
Rich like the secrets of the soul.
I feel the sheen enfold
My every sense—Our friend enters
To lift me from the daze. Conversation
Carries us pleasantly along
Warding off the worming
Word, its silent gathering
Of dread.
III
When I finally stumble into bed,
My head ringing with girls night
Chatter, the four letters pierce the perfect
Glisten of my haze and I begin swaying
On the edge. I am fearful
Of the fall. That frightening, annihilating
Fall, my heart-muscle memory
Aches as I recall how once I risked
And lost it all for the sake of longing
And its lies. Still, once or twice
Before I’ve stood here, on the brink;
Nothing irrevocable has been said,
Done or felt, I think.
We go no further than the doubtful if,
I tell myself, as I struggle to elude
Spring’s engrossing snare. Meanwhile,
The Goddess shrugs, and lifts
Her brush to repaint your portrait
In hues of heedless hope.
Her strokes wane while
She looks for pigment
In the rush.
