The Pest Of A Failed Lover Poem by Robert Rorabeck

These words fail to slice open beauty—
They deliver only the annoyance of a paper-cut
To her half-open eyes
When they want to gash her open with a mortal
Wound through the startled heart—
Like a broadsword cleaving her breasts,
So that you could rush in with the paramedics
To become her savior,
To give her ½ of your own heart to keep her living,
So that you might become her spiritual cousin
In the secret awakening light of an early morning
Bed, where the two pieces of one heart try
To penetrate the flesh, to rejoin
As lovers into the original body—

But these words really can’t do that,
Can they?
When she is your distant affection
Where she swims in waves that break and die
Only upon her in moments of frighteningly beautiful
Surf that are born for her and which you will never see—
How can these words ever reach her there
To breach your desires for her in a cleaving manner
Which would bring her needing to her knees to pray for you?
Rather, they can only become the pest of a failed lover,
To cut her only so slightly that she sucks her finger
Until your sting is gone,
And then she shuts the door of her world in your face.
Your words are already forgotten,
Like waves dashed upon the shore,
She can’t remember she ever felt or saw.