the abundance of vocabulary in the dictionary
yet omitting the definition of you
to spell of who you were and who you didn’t want to be
you were hard to read
as the brick wall constructed in the centre of your town
no one went through, not even a secret pass
the code that would unfasten you from your guard
all in that morose silence
the darkness that followed you, your best friend
and you were attached to it, pinning your nails bound, affixed
and once you smiled, the light that shone through
a crumb of hope, brief and small, but there
existed for a moment for me to notice and retrieve
the hook that fed me for days on
until you took down one brick and placed it at my feet
a gesture of an invite to read you through
one word a time, a test of randomness
rarely making sense
but a word here, a word there
before you became a structure, a sentence to comprehend
you made me wait
but it was worth unpuzzling the puzzle you defined
once all scrambled, aimless words in a dictionary
now paragraphs of life and its states

© simon whittle — from lovers’ tiff: a ballad