R.M. Dolin, April 30, 2024
It’s not that you don’t say, I love you, it’s the hesitant way
you look like someone taste-testing spinach.
I can’t describe it any more than I can tell
you the color of cold, but it’s something short of certain.
Love should be unafraid even if we’re programmed
to rush in looking for exits. It’s a helluva boat we’ve marooned,
you’re hesitant, I’m uncertain, and love's lost,
misfit souls clinging to lifelines that allow us to pretend
it's possible to keep from drowning.
I don’t know how to hold back. I get a thought or feeling
and go, failing to realize I’ve run so fast and so hard
for so long I’ve outpaced and exhausted you.
I lack an ability to recognize when my current something’s
morphing into my next new something
that’s already begun morphing into yet another new something.
I’m three, maybe four branches downstream unaware
you wait upriver wondering where I’ve gone.
It’s not a sin to get ahead of where
I really am even when it requires penance. I do eventually
figure stuff out and desperately attempt to re-sync with reality
only to find it’s not possible; and that dear one,
is the color of cold.
Background poem for the novel, “The Dangling Conversation.” In the first stanza: Isabelle struggles with her uncertainty over Henry’s hesitation. In the second stanza: Kyle reflects on how he overwhelms people in relationships.
