You Were For Me Past Pretty Where We Live In Springs Poem by Gert Strydom

(after Gert Vlok Nel)

You were the woman that found me and brought me back again
and I did love you and were afraid to try again
with your adult child at times far past mad,
where you trapped me in my study and started to caress me

and now you and your mentally disabled adult son live together
and by God's mercy you are spared right through the COVID
where by your decisions I do live away from you,

where everything changes into darkness far past night
and when you come to get the keys and remote
you do kiss and embrace me,
I do mourn over you and you do not laugh
and you do cut me completely out of your life.

Past pretty you were when you came to fetch me,
did undress and caressed me out of my clothes
and that moment and day I cannot forget
where I felt your breasts against me,
I know your nakedness and love
and it smelled like rain and like peaches your breath

and I cannot breathe
where we will not do it again
and you talk to me as your heart and kiss me
and for the tabloids and maybe
Huisgenoot and You it's a story
of sincere love that does not work and does fail

where you now drive me completely out of your life
and your antipathy and resistance to me is great
where without me, you want a own life alone
and I remember how you laid naked against me
and your breath the smelled of almonds
and the lovely intentions in your intimate glance.

That afternoon you came against my will
and in a moment you again turn my life around,
where now you jerk my heart out of my body
and already you mention that somebody must come,
about silent moments of tranquillity and joy

and I cannot breathe
where we will not do it again
and I keep wondering about that kiss and embrace
but it's as if I am now paying for all the happiness

and the last that I do remember
is how you with your daughter and the keys and remote drive away
but still you are married to me
and I do not know how to understand a thing

as your resistance and the blocking of my numbers
and Facebook and Whatsapp jerk me awake,
like the front-door bell that rings shrilly in vain
as if through the years I have been asleep
where still at night I dream about you fitting in my arms

and I cannot breathe
where we will not do it again
and I keep wondering about that embrace and kiss
but it's as if I am paying for the years.

You remain in my most beautiful and terrible memories
and are my wife and I do not know
how to comprehend all of this
where I cannot forget a thing

and I cannot breathe,
do remember you against my body
and it's with tears that I write these words,
where you will not ring the front-door bell shrilly
and I am scared to love like this ever again.

[Reference: "Beautiful in Beaufort-Wes" by Gert Vlok Nel.]
© Gert Strydom