Everything That Touches Me Poem by Linda Marie Van Tassell

Everything that touches me
flutters wings in webs of loss,
captured dreams that cannot be,
open wounds with sphagnum moss.
Hopeful liege of tattered silk,
threaded echoes gently loom.
A mystic moon, white as milk,
softly spills into my room.

Underneath her spectral beams,
sad memories start to flake.
Time passes; and yet, it seems
this shadow I cannot shake.
Parents lost to hands of fate,
loving lost and never known.
In grave silence, they await
beneath pillars made of stone.

Locks of hair and portrait grace
in a hope chest made of wood.
Wedding rings and bridal lace
are the keepsakes long withstood.
Past the point of no return,
past the spark of light of day,
altars rise and candles burn
in rooms where none come to pray.

Clouds are heavy with my tears.
Sad rains fall into the sea.
I have mourned the long, lost years
wanting what can never be.
A totem love, a class ring,
and loving words unspoken.
A heart lifts its fragile wing
to find that it is broken.

Sometimes love is not enough.
It rests better with the dead.
Mournful waves below the bluff
drifting softly through my head.
I was never there at all
in the corners of your heart.
Long forgotten, faded, small.
My true love would never part.

I opened the door a crack,
and the sunlight burned my skin.
You shifted and wrenched it back,
and the clouds came rushing in.
I am tethered to the past
with memories yet to mend.
Never first, but always last.
I find comfort in the end.

I will always remember
those things known and yet unknown.
You left me in December.
Since then, I have walked alone.
I fade into verdigris
as my bloodline turns to rust.
The breath of life departs me.
I return unto the dust.

Plant me on yon sacred hill
beneath the cypress and yew.
Give me a notebook and quill
with inkwells of morning dew.
Let me write across the sky
all the words I should have said
to touch each heart and rapt eye.
Love rests better with the dead.