one thousand years old.

i saw your eyes and felt one thousand years old.
you, too, looked one thousand years old.
in them was my history and a future disregarded for older hopes.
i saw both beginnings and endings in that blue crystal,
your dark empty space staring into mine.
you read my history, and helped write it i suppose.
there are lines in these eyes carved out by you.

in such short breaths, we have tangled our tiny nerves in cracks and spaces;
lungs and ribs coming together from two different puzzles.
knotted, i leave and you come;
you stay and i follow.
we are neither there, nor here.
we are certainly not alone nor together.
we rip and break one another's bones,
adding more to replace what already didn't fit.
we are a bone pile, collected through these years.

such a long life to live in such a short amount of time.
you are my old soul,
and i, for a time, brought youth to your tired heart,
and you to mine,
until i could not take it any longer.
i, too, have grown an old soul.
i recognize life too well, though i have never lived it before.

you could not come, even if i asked you to.
there are the children in your heart to tend to.
and then there is this:
i can not be she whom you've dreamed of.
i do not belong in your dreams.

so i break your bones, give your old soul one more tear.
and you leave cracks and hollow caves in these lungs.
i look at those eyes and wonder how such a tender glance could leave such a hole.
but such a hole it left.

go now, make room for her. sweep out my dust,
don't save any in jars sitting on the window sill,
don't let her know what's written in those years, written deep in the cracked walls.
and i, too will go. i will run into the mountains, hidden, protected, healing,
quietly remembering those eyes.