AJ Lewis Poetry, Poems: A Tragedy Of The Heart (from "A Slip Of The Tongue")

I never really open up to a person
unless I trust a person, and when this happens
a kind of diarrhea of my soul drowns us both,
revealing parts of me that are inclusive to my inner workings.

it is intense and it is honest
and sometimes even a bit exaggerated,
and nothing momentarily feels as good as getting empathy
from a person whose attention you've taken
for an afternoon chat at a restaurant
or a 2am conversation on the phone.

I used to talk to this girl about spirituality,
religion, the occult,
poetry, music
and sometimes even about "us."
she was a good listener
and at some points in our dating
I think she genuinely cared about me.

I remember a conversation I had with her back in 1996.
God, that was not a good year for me -
too much of everything;
which seemed to fit so well with our conversation of
how we would belong together in the future

ah yes, ignorance is bliss.
I have heard this tired cliché too many times,
and ironically it fit me so well then
as love was a simple thing for me to understand,
never having taken that into me.

and so I blindly put it into her,
making love, thinking that's what it was,
milking the ecstasy, and believing the fantasy of being together
forever.

did it last forever? no.

I have re-lived it a hundred times: going back,
making wrong decisions, trying to make it right, battling the carelessness
of being young, until I was sick of it all,
replaying it over-and-over in my mind:
cringing, hating, regretting, losing sleep, and all of it caused
because of those tempting moments of our passion.

this, I have come to know, is the tragedy of the heart.
once I took myself into her
I don't think that I have ever
come back into myself.