The Most Secret Window, Excerpt pages 154-159

                             28
                               I
The air felt heavy and brittle.
It moved around him like a slow-motion wheel
That played the same nightmare over and over
In unbearable monotony.
Nothing brought relief,
The hills, the Bay, the beauty of San Francisco
Were murky and hard; and he, a soliloquy.
Even his body seemed repulsed by a loneliness
That had no color, that felt no rhythm,
That no longer loved the universe.
Grayson put his head in his hands and gave up.
His heart ached from something he did not understand;
It threatened everything he cared for,
But without it, he cared for nothing.



                             28
                             II
Desire was the trap and Lara knew it—
As her emotions were squeezing her too tight;
It was Grayson in the depths of her dreams.
It hurt, and yet she pleaded for it.
She wrapped the snare around her neck
And clipped it to her wrists and heels.
"Oh, cast away this horrible, hideous torch
That blazes up and makes me crave
And holds me as I try to flee,
Holds me, casts me to the waves.
Untwist this anchor from my heart
Although it rips, and like a dam broke, bleeds,
And half aware I gasp, and sigh and plead
To leave the ground without the seed.
Pry not my innocence apart
Even though I lie believing,
Let me wonder, neither touch nor start
My timid chest, in short breaths, heaving."



                             28
                             III
When Grayson pulled away from her--she reached
As sudden as a starving child for bread,
As though his pulling back from her had breached
The secret that was living in her head.
Perhaps the man she saw that day was Grayson
And his image in the real world broke the spell,
Setting him free, her hand to him not taken
As down life's dreaded ladder steps she fell.
Lara’s mind had turned into a wishing well.
She put herself into worlds she read in books;
She dreamed a love who stood as an Adonis,
Leaving her life, in exchange for what he took.
Somehow her love for him became a trap.
She created him, but could not get him back.



                             28
                             IV
Is love more important than Heaven
When you feel it breaking apart?
The sky seems to snap above you
Until it crumples around your heart.
Love is as much an addiction
As the flavored scents of Hell,
And as tormenting an affliction
As the friend who will never tell.
 

                             28
                             V
"Wake up," Lara whispered to herself,
"Wake up you withering child;
Wake up before the skies encroach you,
Slash a sword into your fears
Rip its easy blade across your lids
And expose forever sight, whose pain
Will drive away pain.
Look past the illusion of agony,
Torture that leaves one unable to heal
The deeper immortal infirmities,
The sting of love yearns to reveal."
                                                                                                      


                             28
                             VI
I hold within my hands a broken heart,
But I possess no urge to mend it.
I have no wish to make its beating start
Or even care that time is running out.
I am holding my hands so tight together,
Not unlike a womb engenders life;
But that will never make this heart better
Nor protect me from the inevitable knife
That slashes through me without my defenses
Put up against it, for I never will
Guard against love or inhibit it with any fences.
Even so, this sad heart may soon be still
As its very life spills slowly into a pool,
Hardening, as it begins to cool.