"Hearts and Distance"

“Distancemakestheheartgrowfonder”

 That’s what they always said. 

 It’s what they always told me.

 Assuring.       Constant.       Consoling.

But I don’t think that’s what they meant.

Distance makes one’s heart grow 

Fonder 

Fond, yes, of painless times 

Now always out of grasp, A gasp

of something made nothing in the dark. 

Melancholic

Tender

Not soft or gentle

But freshly burned.

Distance    makes one’s heart grow

Thorns

That puncture the pretty pictures.

Scars 

Not of healed but of missing

Pieces lost and never found.

Walls

around it, forged with salted ice

That falls from the eyes 

Before they learn to see in black.

Distance     makes    hearts    grow     fonder.

It makes minds grow cloudy too,

And makes bodies betray 

any sense of sense from sane 

And makes insane of those 

And that that was once worth

Anything more than just a heartache.

Distance and its closeness brings 

A new mode of desperation,

numbness and creation  

Of hearts too weak to function

But deathly fonder.

A curse.