Then It Was Something More

“Then it was something more. I wasn’t actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity...”

It was really those flashes

in her eyes

that made me do it,

that made me feel that there was something

to be caught, something to be experienced

behind the frigid front.

No, that’s wrong; it was never frigid, only physical.

I guess that’s where I fail,

that’s where I’m the naïve little boy.

I can intellectualize the difference but I cannot

make myself understand, I cannot

make myself senseless.

I can displace,

dispell,

detain it,

but it grows like a chrysanthemum gone wild,

needing to be split

and replanted constantly.

Slowly now.

And I find I’m tired, I’m tried I’m resigned

to keep dividing these roots as my love grows,

fed by tender touches and furtive kisses.

“...for a moment I thought I loved her. But I am slow thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires...” –Nick Carraway