A Pattern Along the Faultline

I still cannot see you clear,
all hues blur through me.
I would please no one now,
would ache no more,
Ice cubes are cold no longer,
I drink, and they turn gentle as a warm current’s hold.

One month, then two, then three—
you lie steeped deep within my cavity.
Your gaze refracts the sheen of cat ears—
dewy, entwined beyond undoing.

I am a strange soul
from the pen of time let loose,
raving down to the bottom of the sea,
then rising up in coils of steam.
If ever you should see me once again,
I hope your eyes cannot pass me plain.
If ever you should catch me in a smile,
I hope it troubles you awhile —
like some dream missed and mislaid,
nowhere at waking for hands to know.

To pursue love is to crave the taste once known,
and likewise, for the narcissist,
to chew again an older dream alone.
Like incomplete columns grafted
with newborn edges and angles;
or ancient walls pieced back
with unfamiliar fault lines —
we became a strange pattern,
twining into one another,
and yet beyond repair.

— Houminmin