The Perfect Metaphor

I won't ever forget you, ya know?

You've been a part of me for so long
in dreams in songs
on floors in beds
I'm baffled by this
vacancy- although I am not
surprised by its rather non-existence,
except though, it's weird, because-
this
nothing
aches- dully,
with the fading rhythms of the heart I charred
with you.
It's dying now; dead. I had hoped
to avoid this show, but when I tried to save you
I dealt only a death blow-
memories swish under a grey-hand haze-
I drift through the days on waves
of oblivion, and I'm wondering,
now, why we ever agreed
to such a fool-hardy
undertaking in the first place.
Were we so naive, really?

I want to believe we both, knowing, sowed
our little seeds of self-deceit, and bit
by bit, and piece
by piece it fell away, in shards
of bitter taste and smell, the residue
of the glue of corrosive lime-lighted
memories of loneliness
and boredom or
survival and denial or nostalgia
and regret or
longing and lust or just--
I want to believe every word
every breath every kiss...
           (I don't know how I shall get through
             the rest of my life without a kiss from
            you) every smile, every morning, lying in your bed...

I feel as if my soul is bruised;
tenderly I prod its perameters and try to discern,
gingerly, the level of my discomfort.
I want to feel the impression of you--
but then--
I retract my probing thoughts from further
exploration because I am afraid (yes, that's right
I said I am afraid!) that I am not prepared to understand
the damage that has been done here, afraid
this storm has split
this hull from breast to belly and so afraid
I will find I have only a broken
bottle to bail and a cork to stop the flood.

(I wasn't through using you to make memories.
How dare you exorcise so roughly from my side,
like you always do, have done- the pattern
is with you)

And yet--
and yet I loved you,
and I care still, but you won't see the way
my undulating sympathies stretch toward
you, for you, in the cold, because never again
will you read my words
and see me.
You will never hear them or see them
now you have gone and never again
will I feel that flush from
reading yours.

I'm stalling.
Why?
Because I know that when this is finished
I will never write another poem, another
word, for you, and that, I think,
is the knife thrust deepest, the hook sunk
sharpest that's latched into the doorway
of my softer self, my tear-ducts side, because you,
my love, my infatuation,
my friend, my sweet, sweet
obsession have been my subject
for so many words I feel
I have written you into my heart.
And just as water washes
sandy landmarks to the careless sea,
the years will wash away
these words, and with them,
feelings, memories,
till you are just a name, on the surface
unremembered pain that hurts
only when it rains,
or just when I think of Edward and that ice-sliver
sadness...

Just one more goodbye
that strikes midnight,
but only when I look down
and see that sweet silver face
smiling up at me.

This last line is hardest-----.