my love

i've made peace with you time and time again
in my mind reconciling the past and the present
unlikely bedfellows, i lie side by side staring at myself (at you)
with the pane of glass in between the mattress

so many nights wasted in tears and agonized minds
so many afternoons with resolute smiles that fade
to never come to accept the truth--that you will always be a ghost
a friend, a first love, someone who holds me

the holding i never knew and the holding i will never be able to explain
the holding, even as i hear the melodramaticness of an urban adolescence
dripping in my voice like the sunset into the subway train, even as i have learned
to blame you for the wilting of the first frost

on my way home, you a different piece of my life, still
a confused old friend, someone who understands me, and does not understand

and that little moment of sharing beauty, even for so many seconds of confusion
the type of life of hard love of complications i will not be sorry for having lived.