Oh, What Love and Fear
Ben Stivers
8/5/06
Oh, What Love and Fear Gave Me Sight of This Beach?
Perhaps my sense has been dulled by four colorless walls
A ghost I remain, collapsed in lungs.
And laying the mortar, I see my father courting a mistress
To bloom a new daughter, a forgotten mother
In a room filled with haunted history.
Skies to the birds and fly on the drifts to skirt with the love,
The only world you've ever been.
Every artist depends on the past,
With shackled fingers I smudge out her dress.
Better to leave hands on the cloth,
Then a line to pave escape.
And you see water.
You're oceanside.
How I longed to dry inside,
Some purchase to all you've confided in me.
I saw your hand reaching through the window,
Chasing the shadow of a good thing,
But I stumbled as my mind drew a picture of us,
Still holding eachother on the beach.
Oceanside.
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