Red Balloon

Red Balloon 

Trying to remember the curve
Of your lips
The graceful shell of your ears
Blush of sun on your cheeks
All I could envision was
An invention of my imagination:
The ascent of a red balloon
Rising against the china blue
Of an April morning.

Eyes shut hard
I persisted
Firm in the belief
That I could recall every detail of your body
Freckles and moles
The hollow at the base of your throat
Grace of your breasts
Swell of your thighs
Flat plain of your stomach
Abundance of auburn hair
Cascading around your gentle shoulders.

But, all I could see
On the screen of my mind
Was the red balloon
Darting, diving
Regaining altitude in persistent departure
Moment by moment further from me.

On it climbed
Until, as brilliant punctuation
In the sky of that beautiful spring morning
The pressure from within exceeded that from without
And it was gone.

What I needed of you was falling
In bits of twisting
Red pieces.

And I came to understand that some things

Are past retrieving.

I try to gather you with words
Structuring nouns and daubing verbs
But it is futile.

The more of you I gather
The less of you I have.

The pressure from within
Exceeded that from without
And you were gone.