Credit for photo goes to Joseph Hoh, ArtStation
A Last Leap
12.15.2022
Into the looking glass I peered back in through the punch hole
walls that cracked my future into mirrored slices,
echoing every decision I must make now. Leaving him behind in the midst of epiphany I slammed through the backsplash of my life - ugliness I thought I'd never climb out of. Into the unkempt path of searching hearts and swiping fingers that turned ghostly ever I got too close.
The crumbling facade of potentials and dagger-toothed grins gave way when I heard your voice.
I found purchase on the diamond steady footing of your genuity shining under the remaining black shards of fear and the unknown.
Kick them away with bashful toes; I dared to let hope bubble up into your gentle lips -
our relieved breaths a shared core to grasp with interlaced fingers.
Bloom into coalescent nebulas of sparkling memory which I catch in a polychromic glass of faded consciousness and drink up in rapture
nearly as equal to the moments they occurred.
You humming to yourself as I catch you folding tender layers of his and hers on our bed.
Our couch-cozy adventures
into the final frontiers of my laughter and your dream of a smile.
The park bench that once held us as surely as we held each other before a crooning river,
laced up with pines and foxgloves, and sparkling with tiny sparrows
spurring us on in their serenades.
A first Christmas together flushing red as our stockings, we deftly clip and preen
a small noble fir named Gus,
who's lit up in wintry moonbeams and anniversary-marked baubles
that twinkle in the periphery of our star-crossed gazes.
And as these moments effervesce in giggling golds and playful pinks foaming down my love-quenched throat you keep topping off my glass until I wrap ourselves up in
rose-colored tinsel
and look forward to
never leaping again.