Did I call you beautiful enough?

Was I so careless as to

Confine those words to a feeling?

That time you sat on the counter

While we made heart-shaped cookies

Like the love-sick fools we were

You, perched, so intensely focused

On our task that you hadn’t realized

Your sweater was running off your shoulder

Leaving bare the freckle-spangled skin beneath

And me, blissfully unaware of your intentions

So enveloped in how stunning you looked

That perhaps, I never told you.

So reckless we were in our affection, you know

Trying so hard to capture the light in each other

To warm the coolest caverns in our hearts

Where fear reigned with a ruthless hand

That we did nothing more than extinguish

The very warmth we so longed for

 

Did you really think that by feeding your every gluttonous desire

For my attention you would actually need me less?

Does foolishness truly run so rampant in me that I believed

That by holding on so tight to you the rest

Of my life would stay in place in my heart’s absence?

 

What romantics! What antiquated notions so easily dispelled

By the fall that always follows our pride

 

You needed me

I needed me

But we both thought only of you

 

Did I call you beautiful enough?

I ponder this tonight in the arms of a new lover

So much more at peace than before

But still the question begs an answer because

He calls you beautiful

I hope that is enough.