What do you wish you were
by Jaime Lee Moyer
I'll never understand this man,
he bounces on and off the stage
of my life more often than a
Mikado road show extra,
charming me back into his orbit
each time I break away,
extending the embargo on my heart
and leaving nothing but empty
behind each time he goes.
Friends meet him and ask where he's from,
and he makes jokes about 'the crash',
energy beams and escape pods
with a twinkle and a grin,
his man of mystery persona secure
if he makes them laugh playing the clown,
pinning him down to truth futile as
holding snowflakes in your hand.
But he turns to me sometimes
when their magpie minds move on,
sadness and starlight in his eyes,
and I wonder what he wants me to know,
what truth he can't bring himself to say.
I've asked more than once
when I see restless settle on him
what he needs me to be,
what it would take to make him stay,
and he gives me that grin
like some shaggy guardian angel,
keeping it light, keeping it shallow,
and asks, what do you wish you were?
And I answer with my heart,
caged in as it is with truth
that always makes him pull away,
the distance growing between us
in painful minutes and eternal hours,
until the day I wake to find him gone.