Mariner

I awake to the gentle, rhythmic tide of your breath

Pressed to the nape of your neck, clasping the steady wheel of your breast,

I set sail between consciousness and sleep,

Adrift on this restful morn, with oceanic content,

With you I have everything I could ever want,

Everything I could possibly need,

And yet I am but a brittle, thankless mariner,

For on this peaceful water, I dare myself to even ask:

“Why is it you love me?

…and what compels me to love you?”

…

In the stars, the answers manifest, hazily at first,

Vague, inexplicable visions resolve into statements;

Some witty, some coy,

Some playful, others indelible, inedible.

The louder voices fray and scratch,

Their incandescence blinds and burns and pollutes the sky.

Unyielding, they bend more light from beyond the horizon

As such unbearable, cynical mass ought to do.

The blackened waters give way to an inescapable, studying gaze,

The lights scatter into nebulous, gaseous hues.

Hyperfixed at one moment; tepidly forgotten the next.

Why is it here, in the sanctuary of your embrace,

Firmly planted atop this remarkably stalwart deck,

That I scatter my mind and rupture my nerves,

In recursive, centrifugal bludgeoning?

…Why can’t I trust what I feel?

…

Perhaps it has been so long, that I forget,

Amidst the thicket and brambles of our many years encircling together,

Roots folding beyond sight,

Aged limbs branch outwards, nascent and thin,

Splitting and extending outwith the bounds of reason;

Much like Nature herself,

There are no definitive charts, no precise directions, no unifying answers.

Some things just are, and cannot be proven.

That’s okay.

Just be happy.