Things you may not know and a world of maybe

For recent stories about my life, check out the China blog (www.dimsumseeker.blogspot.com). For now, this is kinda the final poem from the chapter in my life that became closed at the end of July this summer. One final poem about her...

You used to hold poetry in your words
And in your eyes
Even though you never knew it
Or maybe you did but never shared that awareness
With me

And you also didn't know
That you became my muse
In all the struggles we faced
And in the turmoil I could feel
Living underneath your skin

You were my biggest challenge
And my biggest triumph
And for so many of those early months I considered the fact
That maybe I was reaching beyond my world

 As Icarus, you were my sun
And maybe now I am simply plunging into the ocean
If the tale were true

But I'm starting to understand
That such tales are merely dreams of fiction
And not reality
No matter how much welled up inside me
You were not all there was 

A gleaming star for a time, but not the only star in my skies
And maybe I dreamed you to be something else
When I looked at you
Which led to this inevitable fall
Or maybe I'm just getting caught up
In all my romantic tendencies
As an attempt to immortalize our story

The attempt remains fruitless
As we've proved that we were mortal
We lived. We died.

Maybe we embraced excitement and passion
Before we began to live in a banal world
And the appeal I held for you early on
Melted away as I embraced my inner pragmatist
Maybe you fell out of love with me long before I knew I lost you

I used to consider it my biggest failure
That I could not find and give you 
What you truly sought
I was only able to provide
The things you asked for over the years
Thinking they'd be the balm to soothe
All your anxious unhappiness

Still, I knew that all these things
Wouldn't lead the way to happiness
Or satisfaction
Or simple contentment
But that didn't destroy my hope of maybe

Not at that moment, anyway

Since then there has been calm, then storm, then distance
Before resolute calm again
But the most recent torrents marooned us
On islands endlessly distant
So now we call across oceans in meager attempts
To salve what remains

What still exists in my mind is what I remember before
And it's those memories that I'll cling to 
As a way of salvaging what we were.
You are not what's to come, 
But you'll always be that piece of who I used to be.

T