This Ruined Statuette

I had a conversation and the act 
was likened to a state of pennies 
gleaming in the water nimbly in a stream
below a cheap horizon and a hopeless prospect 
of together that should not have been.

The butterflies came swiftly 
beating their mercurial wings when I 
imagined something stable in remembrance of 
the chisel that Pygmalion had wielded to perform a 
statue permanent and cruel. 

In the carcass of our union 
you shall detect an evanescence 
burgeoning untimely in a thought that 
chortled you—unsolicited 
conventions unexplained by your convictions. 

My only thought to you was pleading for 
forgiveness after one wrong turn had sent us 
through an oceanic comedy of melodies unsaid, 
lies unstated and omission of belief 
in second chances, holistic character, my youth.

Balsam smears a thousand foreheads 
suffering from beating headaches in obsessive 
paltry thoughts caught up in an impossible 
tomorrow predicated on a step in one direction 
four months long that was not taken. 

Lonely swirls the fan in this vacated 
alcove when it could have blown down 
you or me wrapped up in our bodily 
privations touching screams that are no 
longer burning from some distant presence.