Only So Much More Time Poem by Danny Speicher

Don't move too quickly to scare her away
Don't be too coy to feign disinterest
Keep the ugly past inside for now
To even come close it must be this way

Know your flaws intimately but don't say
If mentioned aloud they may be critiqued
Some of them can't be hidden in darkness
The fat and the baldness, are clear as day

Somehow she's talking to you despite these
As if I were as beautiful to her
As she's so very beautiful to me
Oh, her eyes could level me to my knees

I'd love to trust her words when she is kind
When she says how kind or handsome I am
Or asks how I'm still be single right now
I wish I had access inside her mind

For now I tell her truth, only in part
Experience almost assures failure
And my heart can only break so often
Before the countdown to madness starts

Only so much more time left on the clock
Before I am left alone in this world
No family to comfort and love me
I can hear loneliness fatefully knock

So, here I stand again, my heart displayed
Too scared of being alone to not try
Too horrified of my scars to give all
But, if you can hear me as my heart's laid

I pray you are the one I've waited for
And that what we build is forevermore

((11/22/2020))