There is a place that I live
that does not exist in real life
where we never touch
yet everything is intimate
the way you look at me
the things we both refuse to say
I know the patterns of your absence
it is a lot like knowing what rooms
that I am not allowed to enter
and which questions, if ever asked
would bring the sky down upon me
for this is the cruelty of quixotic love
it does not blind itself to reality
but chooses longing anyway
I know why we can never be ‘us’
I could list the reasons
timing, circumstance, other lives
the quiet ethics of not destroying
what already exists, but yet…
in the depths of the night
you appear over and over again
always just reachable enough
to deeply wound me
later I awaken with a deep ache
and a memory of a place
that cannot be entered again
my grief settles quietly
into the marrow of my bones
and the place that I live in
that does not exist, just windmills in my mind
a constant reminder
of everything that was never wrong
but is still forever, impossible
©Ann Bagnall
Annie's Poetry 