BEAUTY OF THE DAY

THE BEAUTY OF THE DAY

Unfurls before me like a fleeting dream,

And there I am—lost, adrift, distracted,

Delirious in the haze of it all.

Thoughts seep and permeate,

Unbidden, relentless,

Slipping through the cracks of my consciousness,

Unraveling the tidy threads of my intent.

My to-do list lies abandoned,

Pages curling at the edges,

While butterflies riot in my gut—

A reckless dance,

Ignited by the echo of your laughter,

A sound that lingers like a melody I can’t unhear.  

I close my eyes and summon you,

Recalling the precise constellation of your freckles,

Each one a star I’ve charted in silence.

That smile—oh, that smile—

A current I’d swim upstream to meet again,

Through torrents and tempests,

Against the pull of reason itself.

Every contour of you I’ve memorized,

Every curve and shadow etched into me,

A map I trace in the quiet hours,

A topography of longing I cannot erase.  

These untrained daydreams stumble,

Clumsy and unmoored,

Lacking the space, the structure,

The proper compartment for this—

For us.

What is this alchemy between us,

This wild, untamed thing?

It defies naming,

Slipping through the grasp of definition,

A riddle I turn over and over,

Amused, confused, abused

By the fragments you scatter—

Scraps and crumbs of yourself,

A trail of fleeting moments you leave behind.

And I, of course, follow,

Helpless as a moth to flame,

Chasing shadows you don’t even know you cast.  

Rationality, I call your name,

A plea for anchor, for guidance,

A steady hand to steer me through

This labyrinth of indecision.

Draw the line, I beg—

A boundary sharp and resolute,

A demarcation carved in stone,

To keep the borders clear,

The edges defined.

Let it tether this wandering sensitivity,

This tender ache that loiters too long,

So it won’t stray too far from home,

Won’t lose itself entirely

In the vastness of what might have been.  

Yet even as I plead for clarity,

The beauty of the day persists—

A quiet rebellion against my will,

A pull I cannot resist.

Your presence hums beneath it all,

A current threading through the hours,

And I am caught, still,

In the undertow of you—

Not quite lost,

But not quite found,

Suspended in the space between

What is and what could be.