Stifled

I feel stifled,
held back by the wind,
a muffled, drowsy air,
not suffocating,
but a great salt lake
surpassing every horizon,
rendering escape impossible,
where I have little more to do
but figure out how to kill time,
as time in turn works on killing me.

I’ve had years to fashion it otherwise,
and whilst I find myself in favorable stead,
I cannot live like this;
so without
the one thing that makes it all worth living –
for even the joy it brings to sing and play,
the sadness in my songs will well and swell,
and one day pull the trigger
or pour the final straw.
It is not uncommon.

I’m bitter about the whole affair;
that I could not have saved you sooner,
that faking presence via phone calls is what remains,
where once it was all we had
to listen and learn and dig and discover.
Now this in-between time has become a dead purgatory;
stop-gapping our kisses with endlessly repeated riffs
from songs we played together.

I do not wish the time away.
Nor can we recover a younger beginning.

But I am half-alive without you,
and I have half a year to serve.