I Fear For You

I fear for you.

What darkness does to you when no one is looking,

I fear for your eyes and what they make out in the dark;

shapes that look one way to you but away from me when

I turn the lights back on. You say nightmares come in pieces

and leave you like a gust of wind from some place far, far away.

I keep questions loaded behind my lips like bullets of a gun I am too

afraid to pull because I’ve never hurt anyone, but somehow I dream of

you and in my dreams I am allowed to ache for a ghost that I’ve caught between

the branches of a brave olive tree.

I fear for me.

When you rouse from your dreams into the arms of another,

I fear for my chest and what it does when you are never around;

muscles clench and sinews tighten like the ropes of a boat ready to

leave land. I am scared yours would be the last face I see before the dark

pushes me off a cliff and my broken body becomes the bones of a ship forever

lost at sea.