I Was a Tear Drop on Your Cheek

_I was a tear drop on your cheek
one winter morning when you rolled over
and said I love you to someone who didn’t
hear you or see you or know you
and you wondered was I deaf or blind or stupid
to hear silence
to see emptiness
to know nothing.
What he said was All Right
but it wasn’t, not in the least.

And then I knew life for the briefest of moments.
I wanted to comfort you because up close,
you are perfect.
The antithesis of a Van Gogh or a Monet.

Men lack imagination.
They can only remember
the things they have seen
up close, and a bed
may as well be the ocean.

They say energy is neither created nor destroyed
but your laugh lines prove them wrong,
and I slid down one, coming to rest
at the bottom of a scar on your chin
from when you were truly alone for the very first time,
nothing around but the empty swingset and the gravel beneath you.
I wanted to tell you how warm you were.
I almost evaporated then and there.

But men are reptiles
and they quickly forget
the warmth of a rock
once earth trades in its suns for moons.