I should know better, but I'm a willing fool.

A brief precipice of days
Marks the easy descent to our goodbye.
My words are careless now, desperate,
A clumsy unfurling of what I might have felt,
If we only had time to bide.

With you, I meant to practice a careful love,
Exercise an arm of my self control,
And rediscovered my heart, writhing
At unmeasured and passionate cadences.

What could have come from all the long looks,
Knowing silences, slow dances, low light--

Nothing, now; only rooms filled with faces
Not yours, nights not spent waiting, and, soon,
The soft death of suffering, the clatter of heartache,
a lessening din.