Worded You

I came to care about the shudder of winter
and the little portraits I’d compose
of faces past and turmoils evened.
I came to understand the differences between the agings.
There is the immediate.
There is the momentary.
And in the end there is the knowing.

I never painted your portrait.
I never knew your moments
and I never understood what failed to shudder in your winter.

If this were fiction, right here is where I’d say: He’d look back on that storm for decades to follow with a sense of connection to the woman who cared.

But this isn’t fiction. And I didn't.

This is the reverence. And now I do.

It’s the shudder in the winter in the portrait of the window where I came to care.
I came to care.
But when I left,
When I stopped coming,
You stopped looking through that window.

I came to care about the shudder of your windows and the portrait of your winter.
But I never Worded you.

And for that,
I will always be sorry.