21

Twenty-one years of confusion,
Twenty-one of bliss,
Twenty-one cold years spent
trying to warm a frozen pair of hands,
Spent in love, and living in shoals
that were sure to drag me under but
never quite made the final stroke.

Twenty-one years born in a heart
that could scarcely carry its own weight,
Twenty-one years of false salvos,
Reaching out to warm bodies with heads
just as muddled and lost as a secret held
at my own gate, veritable, awake.

Twenty-one winters, some bright, some
bleak, despite conspiring to eke
out a now encroaching perception,
Twenty-one years that occurred, perhaps,
In the folds of fate and chance,
To shape me into something new;
A more suitable frame to harbour you.

And I await the next, as a summer long
awaited blooms.