VITA NON EST VIVERE SED VALERE VITA EST

You seek to unnerve me
with burning eyes
and a silent tongue
expecting me to react with emotion
where, in you, there is already none.

"To what end?",
I asked myself.
Would sharp words
or a tearful unraveling of me
have done any more for you at the time?
 Had it ever before?

You'd have had me feel as though you were waiting-
False. invisible tension. for that which you coveted
mixed with misconstrued endurance.
To you, a strength, but to others,
a withered root of what it was to hope.

Instead, there was nothing of you.
A cold and static iron rod bent
to its shape by indifference
rather than  living coils of anticipation
and possibility I know is in others.

There is no intention to your face
save the status quo.
An invisible answer already on your lips
for the question you think
I will never be brave enough to ask.

The assumption is, I owe you a debt
from glaring eyes, to wear these feet of clay.
You say I am too emotional for anyone
yet I must admit, in me, there is still empathy.
Even for stones.

My thoughts were never my own.
But inwardly penitent, I whipped myself unfairly
for finding that which frees me,
for actions I choose in response
to things you claim you never said or did.

A hard, unyielding tendril
I had no hand in planting
yet nurtured within myself
to curl around an unspoken  dream
suddenly withers and cracks.

The clockwork springs
snap free, and turn again
tiny hands of a silent epiphany.
Vita non est vivere sed
valere vita est

You don't make me wait
any more than you ever did.
I learned to live with this
to live with less.
But she does not.

I will speak my mind
but not to you.
Softer eyes will behold me
and the tongue that oft runs much and errs
speaks as much from feeling as from thought.

Were I to set upon my love now
acrid railings or vented rage,
the tapestry of anger could not be woven.
She knows not how to make it
Knots of discomfort  are unraveled by her


To her, time counts
and keeps counting
but every wasted moment
held  but ignored and unused
was noted by her and felt for more.

"To what end..."
he could ask himself
"would this love stay so long for her?"
I smile inwardly at the face of placid indifference
saying nothing while I think to myself.

There is a difference between waiting
and in doing nothing.
Both are the same seen from the outside
but  only one can stay with hope
while the other fails in its keeping.

A day, a week, a year.
Would matter a whit to her at all.
What is it to ask the patience of a stone?
Already the answer on silent lips. Nothing.
No small wonder it was easy.

To her, I am but a difficulty
to be crushed in  fists
becoming  even smaller grains of sand.
But instead,  I slip myself
between this one's fingers, whole and complete.

Empty open palms
possess more of me with quiet thoughts.
To those hands, like a bird  I am held, it is true
but cradled from the sides in a nest
not from the top as a cage.