Pendulum

by Andrew LaLuz

Those sweltering summer days
couldn’t contain the crawl of a cold sweat
on nights I awoke from warm dreams of you,
to a cool bed without you.
You might wake up on mornings like this and feel cold and empty yourself.
The subdued hues of blooming winter blues arriving vibrant and early.
You went numb and flicked me away with your frost-bitten fingertips.
Rationalized it any way you could,
because nothing was more terrifying
than taking a sledgehammer
to the walls you barricaded yourself and all your truths behind;
leaving yourself exposed to those undisclosed moments
that still throb and sting like venom in a vein some days.
Days when those latent pains come seeping back through the unpatched cracks of time,
crawling across the faces of clocks,
with their rewinding tick-tocks flicking forgotten switches in your memory.
How we wished those recollections would finally fade
like a teardrop stirred in sand,
allowing you to leap.
In flight, knowing for certain
this next gust of love is a wave of wind beneath your wings
and not the same wicked weight that has kept them clenched and closed for so long. 
Soil dwelling seed
I could give you every ounce of water the oceans offer,
but you must flick flames upon the wicks that stick out of the sky,
‘til they bloom from your fumes and blink like fireflies.
Supply the spark with stars you carved into the night,
until daylight floods your window just the way you dreamed it might. 

You occasionally chipped away like a cautious sculptor,
digging deep to let light bleed through the cracks
and drip specs and spots into the shadows around me.
But, I awoke in a fog and saw
you had patched up those same holes, days later.
That light long gone.
Your language and tone cutting through stone like a cold draft.
I tried to carve love loudly enough into the concrete for you to hear it.
Found ways to show you without saying it,
knowing those words
may wallow in loosely stitched wounds
that teeter like the eyes of light sleepers
on the brink of blinking awake.
I wish I dodged every creaking floorboard I tip-toed across to get to you.
I could only be there to try to drown out the echoes.
There were times you needed me far enough away
for my voice to become a distant echo as well.
And I wondered if I’d be pushed too far away
for even the loudest yell to break through the walls of wind between us.

Maybe one day you will have calmed the storms into such a slumber
that a mere whisper could surf through the silence
and knock cobwebs off the clocks stuck on 12,
reminding you
how our hands would come together
and make the seconds
seemingly stand still;

Known to fly,
Pass us by
and wait for no man.
I knew I loved you
when it felt like time
made an exception.

You can connect with Andrew and see more of his writing/spoken word on Instagram.