Bittersweet Poem by Janine Campbell

How can this beauty be tinged by pain?
Touches of blueness on sultry red
making swirls of violet, my favourite colour.
Knowing this, knowing it too well,
I cry with the sweetness
and the exquisite ache of loving you.
For the distance between us,
the part of your world that can’t be mine.
I cry in wonderment for feeling you so near,
so close that your breath is soft and fleeting
as summer against my skin.
I lie on my bed, late sun creeping in
lazy tendrils against my open window,
feeling you sleep a million miles away,
spinning me into your web of night,
folding me into the fabric of your dreams.
The rhythm of the afternoon echoes
in the beat and thrum of your beloved heart,
oceans rise and fall between us,
the patterns of life go on.
‘I’m with you’, I whisper to the air,
‘I’m with you’ and the breeze on my face
whispers back, comforting,
telling me it is so.