Bouquet
The paradox at the root
of every moment I spend with you
is that every second of happiness
is the seed of the sadness to follow—
the knowledge that you are yet one more man
whom I will love
who will not love me in return,
knowing that every smile you give me
is not one I am meant to keep
but simply to admire
for the boy it will one day belong to,
while I get to own the messages
of how he never loves you right,
never loves you well enough,
or never loves you at all.
I will be the sounding board
for every first date, romantic notion,
the things you want to say to him
but are afraid to.
You will say them all to me
so I can listen and advise,
but they will never be meant to be something
I can hold in my hand,
feel it take root in my own being
to become real words and feelings that belong to me.
It’s not my first time as second best—
I know this feeling well,
what it’s like to finally let a little of the light out
that I’ve kept shuttered so long
only to find out it is never enough
to light the night between us
and is just that much less illumination for myself.
People used to give flowers
to represent meaning—
lilies for death,
roses for love,
pansies for thoughts….
If I were to give you and every other man
I ever truly loved
a single bouquet of what’s unsaid,
I would need to find new species.
Give me a flower that says,
“Time alone has stopped seeming like solitude
and is now just empty space
that nothing seems to fill.”
I would need two that say,
“I notice the other side of the mattress
still looks pristine,
because no one else has slept there.”
I would need accents around the edges that said,
“I write you poems I won’t let you read
because words released into a vacuum
never become more than silence.”
And at the center,
some simple blossom that said,
“Pick me.
Choose me.
Love me.”
But if that flower existed,
it would be dead,
wouldn’t it?
Picked, put in a vase, admired
and then gone.
Nobody listens to flowers anymore.
I tend my gardens,
though they’ve gone to weeds.