In Conflict

I’m full of half-written poems
hidden inside me
which tremble at the sight of day;
but they cast soft glows inside me
when he warms me up and
the glitter from my eyes
trickles deep within me
and stays there for days
adding words to staggered verses I write for him,
staying incomplete and inert
and still refusing to finish themselves,
until he comes back
and stirs my silence once more.

I oscillate between deep desire and clutching fear
of the happiness that abounds me
when I’m with him;
sometimes sewing my wounds
with his words,
sometimes making new memories
with his hands
as he holds my heartbeat
and everything in it;
and yet I don’t part my lips
to either read to him
or even kiss.

We move from voices to form
to vision and watch each other
build ourselves like mounds of snow
one snowflake at a time,
glistening in each other’s eyes
and melting in each other’s arms,
but saying nothing at all
either because it’s too cold
or because we’re afraid
that saying would
arrest us in promises
that the rising sun might not
let us keep.