Picture (inspired by Ed Sheeran’s Photograph)

My memory can fade,

My memory can go blank,

I shall still have you
With me.

When held in the arms

Of a teary beholder

Silence can speak,

It can even get you back home

long enough,

To walk the same old streets
You used to belong to

And be young.

Who needs more evidence?

Who needs more proof
There was “us”?

Who can doubt those eyes

Even though they don’t see the future

But only the past?

In a photograph

A heart never ceases to beat.

Only our time is stopped

Right between two kisses,

Only our souls are healed

Sharing a smile so selfless,

Or a moment of clarity
with the taker

Right before the age of the selfies.

Though frozen for life
inside a silver frame

Or an elusive prisoner to a flaring screen

You are still perfect.

Platonic Harbors

I look back and see no storm

The lifeboat, as always, is empty

I am adrift

On a shoreless sea

A gifted sailor 

Running out of worries

Leaving behind a tangled net of what-ifs

Feeling only lighter, not lonely

Inside a tangible, spider-web-like breeze

Swinging amid a burning horizon

In circles.

There is hope

In this immaterial voyage of mine

For a human pendulum

Constantly eluding balance!

A cold comfort keeps growing around

Taking over the melting spirits within

No anchorage visions for now

Or into the wind

To daunt me.  

From a distance I might be just a point

One step farther and I become invisible.

No mermaid song

To cloud my judgement,

No agony in the drinking of sea water,

No strings;

Only one piece of rope 

Attached to my pride.

I remember there were times

I’d resent seeing a lighthouse

Or hearing the “Land, ho!”cry
Or defensively anchoring.

The perk of being your own crew 

May break one's soul into spells of magic

Making no piracy worthwhile.

I have been everywhere

Surviving my past

In plain sight, I am here and now,

Though concealed from the rest of the world

You can see me:
Just wondering why

The shorter straw is never the last.