Framed But Unseen

In the attic’s grit, he digs up a box,
yellowed photos of a stranger he once owned –
arms like young oaks, grin splitting the horizon.  

Now, his mirror jeers: belly a punctured tire,
airless and slack, skin sagging like wet laundry,
each fold a map of years nobody claims.  

He turns to her, fishing for a flicker,
but her gaze slides off, oil on water,
their bed a rift valley, her spine an unclimbable ridge.  

Fingers brush her arm; she stiffens,
a winter tree, brittle to his heat.
Her touch lands like a memo,
a pat, a nod to the room.  
He pleads, voice unraveling like a dropped spool,
“Love me, see me, hold me close.”

She ticks, a metronome, her love a vault,
combination rusted shut.  
Years pile like unpaid bills,
days cashed out from a emptied account.
He dreams her hand hunts his in the dark,
wakes to their bed’s tundra,
her side a frozen lake, glass-flat.  

Nights, she sleeps, back a barricade,
and he leaks salt into the pillow,
a man drowning in a dry room.  
For decades, he’s chased her-
arms offered like a coat in the cold,
hugs heavy with want.
She returns a shrug,
a stranger’s handshake at a bus stop.  

He’s begged, a cracked bell clanging,
“Show me I’m not a ghost here.”
Tens of years, her silence yawns,
a quarry swallowing sound.  

He pictures his last gasp –
a lone leaf dropping in an empty park,
she, a passerby, glancing up once,
then strolling on, unscratched.  

Or worse, her at his bedside,
tubes hissing, watch tapped like a drum,
her sigh a gust when the machine flattens.  
Yet still, he’s the fool in the rain,
eyeing the road for a bus long scrapped.

His love, an untended garden,
weeds throttling the roses he sowed.
Still, he waters the dirt,
praying for a bloom she’ll never pick.