Strange Bedfellows Poem by Ryan John Payne

You and I sat on our very own wall:
Enamored, I didn't notice we'd fall.
All the king's horses, all the king's men
Never could put us both together again.
My feelings for you were quite out of style:
My laconic conversance was simply a smile.

I borrowed the horseshoes, borrowed a steed;
Knights in shining armor did not include me.
So I put all of them back and continued with life.
Eventually, I married: I found my own wife.
Years flew by and our affinity melted away:
My hopes became frail, quagmired and frayed.

No benevolent malevolence could have undone
The tripwire that tripped me, as romance had begun.
If camaraderie were sanctioned, I would've sought
An end to the dispersion I wholeheartedly fought.
Were the world mine, never again unrequited love,
Yet I resurrect no more than the phantom thereof.

When, all at once, left in the land of the living,
Death canceled my chance for another beginning.
My stairway to you would be irrevocably blocked;
Your premature dissolution invoked quite a shock.
I once was bewitched, but we're both out of sync:
Our love, now enchained, I saved without ink.

I would have climbed every mountain and followed,
Yet, buried with quicksand, we became swallowed.
I felt broken, back and forth, crying silently in sleep:
My own Carrickfergus lies interred, six feet deep.