Between The Tears

Between the tears
that flowed unseen in my heart,
between the lips of silent pain
loneliness was an asp’s fangs.

Yet she felt the numbness and the agony
in every pore of missing caresses
then let love be the bandage
of my many gaping wounds.

Slowly she wrapped what others had ignored,
gently she bonded my vagabond soul
in those touches that had been
a famine that never ended
for so many aching ages of being alone.

She didn’t care I was scarred,
didn’t fear my mutilated heart,
merely paused to reach out with her compassion.
Softly stretching that gauze of affection
upon my bleeding cuts
left by so many knives
used by voices with only
betrayal as their edge.

And amid the sobs and despair
her hands moved to lift me
out of that rut along the side of life
where others had robbed my trust,
just content to abandon me to death.

Now in her arms I lay
as a feather upon the wind,
quietly savoring that precious gift
of the embrace that never before
came without acid in the hug.

Oh every second spent
in the beauty of her sweet nursing hold
gives me the only joy I’ve felt
in that endless desert of time.