Strange Bedfellows OR Strangers in Bed

Hey, would you care to listen?

Whether we have known each other

For a day or a myriad of years

Whether we be strangers in love

Or eternal bedfellows

Whether every sight of the other

Tingle excitement

Or mundane ordinariness rule the day

Will you not reach out to squeeze my hand?

Each time I share excitedly the treasures of my findings

Even if words obscure and full of falter?

Will you not lend me your hearing ear?

Will your eyes not glisten with my stories?

Will you not reach to wipe the tears I shed?

And hold me tight each time I shudder?

Or smile knowingly even as I make faces?

It’s my pain that I share

Shattered visages of my ancestors

I am but my past

And it is my past that has been defied

Shrouded with the blackness of a full moon sky

Soiled in the trenches of London

Trampled by her majesty’s horses

In tatters I find my Self

Broken, squashed, darkened

My Self, the memory of my history

Can I dare to dream?

Of rewriting histories?

Of mending memories?

Of reconstructing my Self?

But how should it begin?

Where should it start?

If it’s my present that frames my past

Then won’t it begin with you and I?

I hold on as you brace me up

We tell stories, create memories

Talk into the night about the distant lands

About ancient cities, roaring warlords

The rich and the poor

The prince and the maiden

Of children crawling up to their fathers

Of babes clinging to their mothers

Suckling calves in the yonder farms

Stories of love, anger, pain

Tragedies of life

As we talk, laugh and wipe the silent tear

Memories refreshed, the Self strengthened

Then the lamb will lie with the lion

You and me, together, forever