Lonnie Hicks (www.lonniehicks.com / Chicago Ill)

Some say to me I'm pitiful
craving the joy you intend for another
I'm the shadow roommate
the homely friend of the beautiful
girl she is;
the one you'll marry
and I will position myself
for the bouquet
when it is you I want.

You knock and enter;
I lower my eyes
unable to look at you
and you take a flower
from her bouquet
and give it to me
because that is the way you are
kind to everyone.

And I take it to my diary
and put it between my
written pages
where it will scent my thoughts
of what will never be.

The cruelest love of all
lies in that Love's Aspiration
lies dead in the road
unnoticed.
It's not your fault or hers
it's my own secret obsession
from which I'll never be free.

I sit in the window, looking out down below
and I hear your voice:

' I just want you to know
I think you are great'
and then you left
and I could hear her
crying softly
in a bedroom
full of tears
and I rise to look to see about her
trailing guilt
and hope against hope
and wonder
still reeling
from the fact
that you
had spoken to me;

no longer invisible
filled with your words which have splattered
onto me
intended from my roommate
electrified that you noticed me
a single flower from a bouquet
intended for her-

awakening then
from yet another daydream
of you
and me.