Shroud

What pains you when you lie awake

and my words have done little to soothe

your lacerated skin of joy and content?

Must you rub, with bitterness

at injustice, into your wounds

the torturing salts?

Friend, stand; look out a window

Your pillow seems hardened by unending thoughts.

As I do, at night, perhaps you will see

silence-it is becoming

a soft, pale, shapely light

Not perfect and always hanging

She is you, and you are a reflection

of the kind; the beautiful; the bright.

What solace can I bring you

when your anxieties threaten to overcome

with my awkward words and fumbling

if, when I speak at all.

I wonder-yet you begin to smile

at things I knew not I could say.

I wonder-for you don't even understand

that you're what brings them out of me.

Does it matter;

You're uncontrollably caught

in aching fits of mirth

I'll cease my thinking, we'll just be

two poems in a book.

For when you begin to relax

and when deeply I breathe

We talk until quite late at night

Never tiring of our words

And words are what I bring to you

While you bring much more

And when you take in the clear night sky

This is our worth.