Metamorphoses. (Completed Poem)

              
Cracks breaking through a black square.
White light of a winter dawn
crazing the glass of consciousness.

I wake up with a start.

Your face sleeping on the pillow beside me
is like a shadow in the dark,
a memory of what I thought I knew
before you turned your back and left me,
heaping curses on my name.

I reach out my hand to try and touch you,
making a memory whole again,
solid as marble,
warm as breath.
Invincible life renewed by an artist
shaping beauty from raw Carrara,
a young woman without a heart.

My fingers press the cracks in the glass.

Specks of blood spotting my pillow,
staining the cloth where you once slept,
your head pressed firmly against mine.
Two separate minds.
Two different realities.

White light streaming through the window
lasers me into wakefulness,
with a sudden violent jolt.
Was I awake or was I dreaming
as I lay wishing your return?

The window pane is firm, unbroken.

The pillow case clean and warm.

Is it your artifice I long for,

your painted face in the mirror,

and not the woman behind the gloss ?
Perhaps it was the art I loved,

and not the life in you.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 13th. 2016. - May 30th. 2022.