Fear of the Pen (2002)

He asked before he left me,
if he was just another character in one of my stories.
I laughed when he asked that silly question.
I calmed his fear for that was what his question belied.
I didn’t want him to be one of the characters that I write about.
I didn’t want our love to be a fictional prose.
I wanted more than anything to feel alive
as I live and not as I write.

But he left anyway.
Regardless of his reasons,
the fact remains that he is gone.
With his departure, he became a character
for me to write about.
His good points embellished,
while his unsavory side became glazed over.

I cry now as I write him into a story line,
because his fear is alive and rabid,
although he isn’t around to take notice.
For the second that I started writing about him,
he became like the character of a story.
Sadly, stories end when the last word is written,
at least for the author it ends.
Readers bring to life over and over the tale.

I grieve bitterly, as I write.
For now he will live on through other eyes,
as they read but to me the story is told.
He ceases to exist before the ink dries,
after I write these words– “The End.”

SRP 2002
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Strange what you find when you're looking for something else. Came across a floppy dick... I mean disk that had poems from 2002. This poem was on the disk. It's about Robert--the soldier I loved so much. His biggest fear was that he would end up being nothing more than a character for me to write about...mine was that I would love him forever. His fear came true...mine didn't.

I'm coming to a conclusion about love... at least in regards to myself... that there is no one soul mate out there for me. That maybe my life will always be full of brief 'love' affairs--some that rip me apart and some that give me sass. I jokingly told someone that my friendships last longer than my romances do. It's true--they do.

I've spent a lot of years, soothing souls, boistering egos and being that transitional person--the one who helps them discover just what it is they want, which is usually not me... and thinking about this now makes me want to go outside and shout at the waxing moon... and say "My rewards in the afterlife had better be absofuckinglutely fantastic!"