I Can't Love You Enough, It Seems

I can't love you enough, it seems.

Your love consumes me and 

Everything near you. 

It is an indefatigable dream. 

The conflagration I read about in the newspaper. 

That took two lives and a home.

Love is your gasoline and my guillotine.

I should have known this when I saw you,

but I was blind to everything I couldn't see

For that which I could. 

I never thought I'd lose you, so quickly.

I thought you'd always be

As though you always were.

Consistently.

I sat flummoxed at a bar for months 

Unsure of where you'd gone. 

Patiently.

Not understanding, clearly, as it were,

You were never really here at all. 

The person I knew was only

Half a person, scars and broken things

Collected in a bag of pretty bones.

I couldn't feel you anymore,

Though I wanted to feel you more. 

I wanted to save you. 

But no one can save someone from themself.

This I know all too well.

You were nothing I could hold.

Nothing I could put in my pocket

Or set my watch to. 

Nothing I could count on or invest. 

Nothing I could imbibe or ingest.

Nothing to be put upon a shelf 

Or locked in a house, 

However pretty I could make it. 

Flowers never impressed you. 

You were embers on a waft 

That I tried catching like fireflies in a jar. 

When did I become the broken thing

Who chased someone?

Who reacted so poorly to lovelessness. 

Who went to bed, hungry for you. 

And stopped being himself out of spite.

I could apologize for not kissing you

Goodnight. 

For being callous and coarse, at times. 

For greeting you with less enthusiasm

One day from the last. 

For holding a grudge of things past.

For being irritable because I could

Not express the proper fear of losing you. 

For worrying you would again burn me

In the way you had done before.  

But how silly of me to apologize

To something that has no ears.

That speaks but doesn't listen. 

To love less, hoping for more in return

Like a stock with a yield on investment.

To believe I could ever hold you 

And not be enflamed by that 

Which has consumed you long before

There ever was an us.  

I suppose there is a proper way 

To love you without being engulfed.

Maybe from afar,

Or from a hillside looking over

At your rolling orange and yellow burn,

Expecting nothing in return.

Or maybe it is in selective memories. 

Those that I am free to keep. 

Or maybe in my dreams.

Dreams, if ever I can sleep.