TWISTS AND TURNS OF FATE

TWISTS AND TURNS OF FATE

My hand quivers over the phone,

Fingers slick with sweat, hovering above the cradle,

No tangible reason to punch the numbers,

No excuse jagged enough to slice through the quiet—

Nothing clever flares in my skull,

No velvet lie to drape over these intentions,

So raw they shimmer like a fresh wound in the sun.

I teeter, dizzy with doubt,

Unsure of the space I’d dare to claim—

Are the margins of your life sprawling,

A wild meadow begging for my scrawl,

Or tight as a clenched fist,

Scribbled black with the ink of others?

Do the pages of your days—

Dog-eared, coffee-stained—

Hold a crevice for my trembling mark,

A smear of me amid your blazing script?

I perch on the brink,

Peering into the abyss of you,

Terrified my clumsy touch will mar the parchment.  

Day by day, I peel back your layers,

Chapters unfurling like petals under a storm—

Your laughter’s creases glow like ember trails,

Your head tilts, a cliff casting shadow on the sea,

Your stride kicks up dust from roads I’ll never walk.

Each revelation crackles,

A tome I grip with white-knuckled awe,

Its edges frayed, leather spine splitting,

Yet throbbing with a heartbeat I strain to decode.

I run my fingers over your past’s braille,

Joys scratched out in frantic loops,

Sorrows gouged deep with a blunt quill,

Learning the rasp of your silences,

The heft of burdens slung across your shoulders

Before my name ever grazed your tongue’s edge.  

Inside this churning, fevered mind,

I’m hooked—recklessly, deliriously—

On the notion of our nearness,

A vision that pulses like a live wire,

Blazing through the gray folds of my brain.

I see it—us—

A richness bursting like ripe fruit,

Juices staining our hands,

A tapestry stitched with threads of you and me,

Crimson and gold clashing in the weave,

Knotted so tight the seams groan.

I imagine you snarled in my name,

The letters clawing at your throat,

A burr you can’t pluck free—

And I, trapped in yours,

The sound a barbed hook in my chest,

Reeling me through the sprawl of sun-scorched days.  

I conjure the calendar unfurling,

Months cascading like waves over a jagged shore,

Each square a vivid frame for this closeness—

Mornings where your silhouette bleeds into mine,

A dark spill against the kitchen’s dawn glow,

Evenings where our words tangle like ivy,

Vines curling through the humid dusk,

Nights where the gap between us shrinks

To a whisper of sweat-slick skin.

I’d flood those days with you,

No sly pretext to mask my greed—

Just the naked ache to hear your voice,

A gravelly hymn shattering the hush,

To feel your heat sear my edges,

A richness that binds us,

Names fused like molten iron,

Forged through seasons of blazing sun and frost.  

But here I stall,

Reasonless, excuseless,

The phone a slab of ice against my palm,

My intentions a bonfire roaring in the dark.

I wonder—

Is there a hollow in your saga for me,

A blank expanse of parchment,

Crisp and yearning for my ink,

Or am I a trespasser,

Shoving into a tale already brimming,

Its edges curling with the weight of others?

Your chapters flare in my mind’s eye,

Each one a torch, a snare,

And I’m sold on this fever-dream of us—

A depth that churns like a riptide,

A nearness that singes my marrow,

Tangling me in the wild hope

That you’d slash a margin for my name,

A gash wide enough to bleed,

As I’d carve yours across my days,

A brand seared into the flesh of time,

Through months, through years,