Aphelion | Perihelion

I
am
at a
loss
to fix
the old
cycles I
wind up in
each time I
think about
what you mean
to me. The mania,
the bedlamatic
burden of seeing
you float into and
out of my life is not
a sustainable way to
go through my days. Yet,
when the wicked, silent,
familiar aphelion we’ve
come to know—nay, to expect—
sweeps its orbit ‘round, and
the cruel vacuum of silence
and indifference pushes its
oppressive gravity on my mind,
I’m struck oft by an image of your
visage—your soft, surreal visage—
and left adrift amid the trillion-
mile trial o’ infinite, unforgiving,
unconscionable darkness. Why can’t I
break free from these machiavellian
machinations? Why do our ebbs and flows,
like the moonswept tide, blithely erode
any chance—any convivial, serendipitous
chance—to satisfy the concupiscence that
passionately devours us on our better ebbs
then drives us to ruin on our truculent flows?
In some perfectly harmonized universe, there
must exist a singular moment—a pure and pointed
paragon—where our disharmonies coalesce into a
mellifluous song sung from the lungs of love into
the effervescent ears of enraptured ebullience—a
zenith where you take to heart my expiations, and the
only thing that’s left to do is float, blissful and pure,
into the majestic throes of rapprochement and repose,
having flourished anew into the transcendent reverie
of you and I—the you and I which you and I’ve long dreamt—then,
in this flawless, fervent flourish, consummate the desire
which you and I’ve long shared but never spoke, surrendering
seamlessly to the sweet, surreal siren song of its crescendo!
...But what if it’s just that—a siren song? A cloying ploy meant to
steer my ship awry, into sharp rocks that scrape, split—that
crack my hull and leave me flailing, doomed to drown in icy
waters, my lungs singed with frigid brine? O, once again my
thoughts transmogrify, pulsing and twitching into an
ugly ogre that mercilessly exsanguinates the blood
from my adoring heart, forcing me to view you through
anemic eyes that, drained of their rosy tint, squint
crimson with odious anger. This tedious footpath 
we oft so walk has worn low—snuffed the life of its
grass long ago—making us to tread with bare feet
‘round in circles, circles, dizzying circles... an
orbit whose apogees and perigees oscillate
my mood from scintillation to devastation.
If I could will myself through time, would I
go back to that moment, back to the start of
it all—the innocuous, pelagic encounter;
that thalassic limerence which would
tempestuously envelop me thereon—if
I could, would I grab onto our budding
affections and drown them ere they
had the chance to bloom? Shouldn’t I?
No! I know not what magnetic force
tantalizes me toward your cool
and steely iron, but like those
universal constants—that of
gravity, electromagnetism—
I don’t dare disturb its tug.
My fate is to rest and toil,
toil and rest, in perfect
abeyance, ‘til that rote
cycle cycles so again,
and, as if awoken from
a dream, your visage—
that soft, surreal
visage—smiles on
my countenance,
enkindling my
icy soul as my
perihelion
glows anew
with fire,
and your
spirit
dares
echo:
you—
us—
I.