If I Write You No Longer (poem)

In a poem, you appear.

In a meeting, you disappear.

So I question:

Are you Love's impossible ideal,

Destructive, and broken,

But not helpless?

Are you my fallen pursuit,

Enough to comfort my grief,

But not enough to guide me?

The answer to both,

It seems,

Is yes.

In the Fall,

I return to Love's ideal,

Forget its limitations.

Then I take up the pen,

Scribble hundreds of lines,

All referring to you.

The yearning takes form,

An emptiness grows:

Love defined by absence.

But when the Truth awakens,

The pen refuses your name,

The yearning dissipates.

So I wonder:

If I write you no longer,

Will you vanish forever?

-Zero