BOUND AND LOVED

Bound to a secluded castle of sand,
Engulfed by my shadow of loathing and shame,
Nothing but a ghost in man’s land,
This injured beast cannot be tamed.
Sprouted in the overgrown garden full of thorns,
Like a weed that thrives in vain – a stray without a name.
All the yellow roses that have been heartlessly torn,
Have been replaced with wolfsbane,
And poppies to tranquilize the beast in pain.
Yet…when you stole into my garden,
My desolate, ice-cold heart burst into flames
Perhaps a mixture of fear and ecstasy
At a curious visitor’s unwonted company.
Always from my closed, curtained window,
I watched you come, I watched you go
Under the moon, and under the sun
Each time my response was to run.
Through the glass, I could see you,
but in my turbid, broken reflection
My grotesque face overlapped
your kindly, glowing countenance,
An expression that contorted into
a familiar one of revulsion.
While you marveled at and picked the beautiful flowers,
I wasted that chance by simply gazing with gnawing hunger.
So close yet infinitely distant - a distance to stay safe.
How could I ever show you my real face?
Every time you wandered closer to my window,
Back into my mold-stained corner, I would cower.
The only thing I could ever do, before the end, was due,
was to grow for you a special blue flower,
That flourished like my longing for your warmth,
Yet still not an ounce of courage to leave my tower.
In the wake of your departure, my flower has withered,
Standing alone in the relentless rain, I wept and shivered
Following its last faded petals,
at last, my foolish mask falls and shatters, revealing…
The sincerity could not be delivered.