Looking At You I Shall Tell Some Stories Poem by RIC BASTASA

looking at you
i make stories about your face
lovely stories (though there were betrayals
of the skin, i decide not to include it there)
for a person like you shies away from pain
from that which burns
all these you try to evade and so you keep running away
from everything that signifies
heat and fire)

but so much so for that
my stories travel to your hands
(i have this theme about tenderness
caress, affection, love and love
and holding one on top of the other
fingers intertwining) i
do not want to stop in there

my stories shall travel to your feet
and i shall remember
(those stamping of the feet
on the ground
not the dance in bed
but the leaving of footsteps
the closing of the door
and the final sound of the
thuds)

the ending will be sad
there was someone who left without saying goodbye
while the other
was still in bed soundly sleeping.