I.

Outside of the intensity of the feeling,
Not much remains.
Not the secrets, the space, or the pain:
A memory or two that line the passion with the past.
Those are all we have to say we knew.

So when it plays inside my heart like sober chords,
And I'm still singing along,
I say it was the heat
That took from the moment what shouldn't have been.
Hinted at silently while we waited to breathe,
Stopping the beat of my heart and starting yours in simultaneity.

What we came to then,
We would like to forget,
Pretend into a faded thought,
Muted in simplicity,
As in a breath, we could go on.
But I cried without the words to erase it, and
Somehow it means more than other days.


II.

Shortened and sweetened by temptation,
I trembled beneath your fingertips.
Chest rising, falling, rising again,
Meeting your hands in a perfect collision,
Of darkness and passion and hunger.
Settling into the rhythm
Of the motion of your body,
The pulse of your lips,
And catching hopes in between the kisses.

Wandering on my skin like madness,
Was your touch,
And what it made I cannot relive.
We waited for that moment of release
When time meant only that we had it,
Not that it was running out.

It never came.


III.

Long ago we gave up love for the future,
Where not all hope can be replenished,
Not all faith renewed,
And not all dreams relived.
Neither of us could let go
Enough to believe or forgive.

The more I think on it, the brighter it becomes,
Layed lucidly across my mind:
That is what forbidden feels like,
The loneliness, your energy,
Unforgiving in its lust,
Unspoken in its guilt,
Untold in its duration.
For who knows when it will end?

For us, the moment quitened
In a trace of goodbyes,
Quick hugs, and choked back tears,
Still waiting, after days, to fall.
For us, it was over too quickly.
It had never really begun.