A Last Leap

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.