Joined together at the Lips

Joined together at the lips,
He can see his reflection in her eyes.
Closer, closer, closer still he squints into them;
A million mirrors.
Lips swollen with longing,
Straining to break free once again.
Smooth lines are fringing his face for
The frowns are all lost in the throes of passion.
A gentle music lines the edges of their embrace now and
There is the hint of a little poem in his eyes.

“I will sing you a Story”, he says.
“Silly man”, I would tell him. “Stories are not sung anymore.”
He would sulk a little at this realisation for
Sometimes his world is too delicate for truth.
But she would smile a mile and cradling his head in her neck say,
“You are my song and my story, darling”.
He would look at her through big, believing eyes and
Sleep the night away living that dream.

They have so much history to sift through;
One would think they’ve been joined together at the lips for ages.
Oh, the cloying sentimentality of their words!
Their wretched worlds!
It would put you off were it not for their feverish earnestness.
Life imitating art in its morbid fascination or
The other way round? Stupid games of love and lore.

He was ugly and she owned no tiara
But there is such loveliness in tragedy,
Like an innocent teardrop on the most worldly of cheeks.
Such ugliness too, I tell you, that one doesn’t know what to believe
Anymore than the pulp novel I bought from the footpath yesterday.

“I am going”, she says, “and I don’t want you to come”.
He nods his head in agreement for
The distance has leached him of all his emotions.
You might find him kicking and screaming,
In the silence of his solitude,
Desperate to feel something else.
He cannot read their words, so many millions of them,
Without dying a hundred deaths.
Without knowing his greatest fears.
Without being shamed by the worst of his Days.

The face has begun to fade away and
The lips have been robbed of their blush.
The memories have started to blur around the edges,
Assuming the all too familiar hue of perfection.
Too immaculate for their own good.
Would flaws be an escape?

He catches the drift of a song,
He doesn’t even need to listen
For she had done all the singing. . .
All he does is cry these days, the spineless sod.

A lump in the throat chokes his heart as he pours over her letters
And tonight, looking away into the distance,
Like a poet whose verse is too clichéd,
He decides to put them away.
He has had enough.