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Pt. 2 - Lasting Moment
Her fingers' subtle touch,
Her tender flesh against mine,
But only for a moment; a second that devoured eternity,
A caress like that of moonbeams on a summer night,
I could feel her lips curl into her smile,
though I hadn't looked, for foolish pride,
Her voice, cradled by my senses,
Each vibration of every vocal motion dealing a sonic blow to my inner faith; that which I believed in,
As time regained speed, her words faded into the past,
The meaning, the reaction, the reply -forgotten,
That moment in which time stood frozen in chains,
Familiar visions were rekindled, then lost forever,
Confusion, incoherent, sinking beneath my submerged soul,
No one could touch me deeper,
No one touch could deepen this moment, this loss, this aftermath of bleeding hearts and flowing tears,
Her footsteps echo distantly as reality reappears,
Finding no words from the former conversation,
Seeing truth for the first time; realization,
As the saying: 'Pictures never lie,'
Myself, standing between miles of footprints,
All lead away,
While those I tread travel in an endless ellipse,
A path that encircles yesterday.
It is eerie how precisely you can describe the same experience I had in January of 1978. I loved the line about time regaining speed. This poem hurt to read, because it is so intimately reflective of my own experience with her who was the love of my life up to (but not since) my second marriage. To this day, she haunts me; although her image in my mind is far more controlled and subdued than it used to be. Of course, losing her to a man, first, and then to a woman, next, did not help the situation. And she effectively severed me from my past prior to 1978. The young man I was prior to January, 1978, did not survive that break up very well. To this day, when trying to recall the "before 1978," its images are always mixed up with her presence, as she broke up with me. Time did regain its speed, but has never lost the trace of her presence.
I think the reason we latch on to those moments so much is because we realize that we can no longer hang on, and that's a hard reality to face. By the way, you have an excellent vocabulary.