Lover, Don't Go

You gave me a book.
Its back was broken, the leather was torn.
I took it and shook,
My body rebelling, I couldn't take anymore.

The plane was my captor,
the kidnap of the willing, you forfeited me with a kiss,
it would bring me soon there after,
over oceans like the boatmen, tending the River Styx.

Why did we choose this,
to leave each other now, and let our bodies writhe,
to award ourselves the misery,
of measuring the love we've built and how fast its going to die.

You left me an inscription,
a wordless phrase upon imagined paper,
a declaration that this princess would wait,
if ever this knight found it in him to save her.

At once you both crushed me and made me immortal,
you offered me hope, yet left it contorted.

"Come back to me," you pled, as if there were a chance,
as if these things were possible for the unheroic love of men.

I climbed on the plane, a time for wings to steal me away,

and within my book there waited for me,
the poison of goodbye, the voice of desperation, a soul on its knees.

Three words bled to me from a wound I couldn't close,
a book of three words, a book, in three words, three words, "Lover, don't go."