The Filmmaker

- Rift: Part I - Poem I -

In frames of grief, my life replays,

A reel of dusk in brighter days

Where my love once bloomed in shadowed light,

And died before the final write

You were the spark behind my lens,

My leading man, my means, my end

Now every shot I take is pain,

A masterpiece of yesterday’s rain

It’s a silent film now, no score, no sound,

Just aching breaths and beds unbound

My apartment in Dallas, still intact,

Holds echoes that no time retracts

Your mattress on the first floor,

Still knows the truth you hide behind the door

Where laughter played and kissed our brief daylight,

And sorrow lingered every night

I storyboarded every kiss,

I thought I knew I was capable of love, but now it’s everything I miss

But you walked off set that day,

No curtains call, no goodbye, no words to say

And now I write on fractured scripts,

With your last messages on my lips

Your friends ask how I’m doing—I play the part,

Pretending peace with a broken heart

But if he’d ask me for the truth,

I’d trade this tortured life for youth

I’d bleed through every film I made,

Just for you to come one night and stay

The world moved on, but I rewind,

A prisoner of the scenes I find

Where once you promised “If we were apart, I’d die”,

Now it’s been a month without your hands in mine

So I die here each night on the other side of the lake,

In every dream, I cannot fake

The roads we paved turned to dust,

But still I wait for you, I must

I haunt the edge of town each day,

In case you somehow lose your way

I pray to the God in whom I believe,

That you’ll come back, because you said you’d never leave

I found a photo, fresh and blurred,

Of when we met, before the hurt

I whispered I love you, but time won’t mend,

It just records and never ends

I may be gone from your life, my name erased,

But you’re the name I can’t replace

And though the ring is gone from your finger that I filled with my vows,

I still live each day with fear and doubt

So let the credits never roll,

Let the pain be stitched into my soul

I’ll film the stars, I’ll film the sea,

But none can play the part of you with me

You were my truth, my only art,

Now I direct films with half a heart

So if you see me in despair,

Know that I still believe you’re there

I love you still, for I cannot stop,

Even if my body were to rot

The filmmaker within me,

Will always believe