watcher (august 1, 21)

sometimes i look at you with all the grim fascination you would direct at a wax figure in a tourist trap, waiting with bated breath for the fingers to twitch, or for a blink from those lovely eyes, because you cannot be real.

and i’d hate to look foolish when it’s revealed who (what) you truly are, of course, so my eyes cannot leave you, not for a second, lest i miss some chink in your visage.

i follow the rise and fall of your chest at times, for some proof that you are breathing, and for a moment, i believe you are a living thing but then you tell the perfect joke during a lapse in conversation, something about our middle school history teacher, and then i am not so sure.

then again, what am i so afraid of? if you are some false thing, my having watched you would have had some point, and my having loved you would not have been wasted.

(love is never wasted).

but if you are real…. maybe the real fear comes if (because) you are real — disgust at myself for having reduced someone i love to some thing that goes bump in the night because i could not fathom their goodness.

so blink away, beloved, and i will too, because in whatever form you take, i am too pious to deny you.