Poem by R.M. Dolin, December 3, 2024
There’s a freedom in late at night writing
knowing you won’t respond.
My unedited thoughts flow through
tomorrow as I wait for the plane
taking me to you
that's once more been delayed.
Your straight-line smile
as I open the door. The tender way
my fingers flow through strands
of hair hiding your hesitant eyes.
The reticent way you reveal your story.
You seem so bold and confident
as we settle on the couch,
making every effort to mask
a sudden uncertainty,
an awkwardness that breathes
into every breath as it nervously
attempts to override echoes of
encroaching silence.
Then you ask about me.
You never ask
about me. Perhaps from fear
of tarnishing what could be.
But now you do and then
we must decide.
How will we?
That’s the dangerously dicey question
waiting to be confronted
when we meet.
From the R. M. Dolin novel, “An Unsustainable Life.” Issac pensively imagines his pending rendezvous with Gabriella as he sits alone in a room full of people. He’s far from confidant about his decision to leave the comfortable confines of Chicago for the rugged wilderness of Northern New Mexico and is attempting to quantify the consequences; particularly what it means for their relationship that increasingly feels like something from a once-before distant world.
Written in the moonlit darkness north of Detroit as I watch an early winter storm blow snow across my lakefront window.