You return to me,
Cyclically: as a whiff of a hallucinated scent;
As a flashback that
Etches itself in the atmosphere,
Lingering almost long enough to
Return real.
Short-lived instances, these, wherein
My inner world booms and blossoms
By a sparked (mere) belief in your apparition.
If I am truly lucky,
You return to me as a dream:
Mine, for one night and a day.
So real,
Almost real,
That ever since you left,
I have been wanting to make sense
Of this
First,
I told myself it was the heart's
Muscle memory:
The first time we met; our first kiss;
The first time sex, and,
Above all,
The first "I love you" we
Whispered into
The aether.
All these golden threads tied to time's fabric.
Yet time isn't cyclical,
Later, I considered
The moon the culprit;
Thought
Your returning
Had something to do
With its full pull, or new releasing
All the water that makes me, or maybe
At least my blood.
But despite wishful thinking
Heavily influencing my pattern seeking,
I could never
Honestly link you to
The phases of the moon.
In hindsight,
I was only lying to myself.
Cheating with the dates; what's a day,
Anyway?
Truth be told, I do not know
Why your returning to me feels so cyclical,
But when I look to the night sky each night
And see the constellations slowly changing
Places, as Earth is spinning,
I realize this love is so much
Bigger than me.
And I am spinning,
Spinning, spinning.
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1-6-2026, M.A. Tempels ©