What's true

There's a woman from
my past
who continues to step in and out of my life.
More often than not she's
my one.
She's the woman I'm afraid to think about
afraid to talk about, lest she
stick like a bur in the front of my mind
and longing for her
dulls my senses to the rest of the world.

She's the standard
the perfect woman
and she always has been.

Bottle rocket romances
bursting in the evening sky roar
and fizzle
and when the ashes fall down
to the evening grass she is standing there
in the moonlight
smiling.

She is me running,
my wishing well.

She's the buzz in the morning alone.
She's the letter in the mailbox,
the call I still wait on.

Yet everything else is heartbreaking
as if she sits patiently
through the twists of other women's turns with me,
knowing what will come.

She's the woman every woman
of mine has known and feared.
If they've loved me,
they've hated her.

She is different in life than in my head.
She is unassuming
and sweet and tough.
In my mind she is knowing, calm,
and righteous.

She knows if I deserve her.
But I don't

She is lodged in there.
Wired into the web of my mind.
Entire rooms in my head are hers,
though sometimes avoided.

The quick cup of coffee,
the three sentence correspondence,
the picture flash on the screen
burst the doors of the rooms and
the sound of her laugh,
the bite of her wit
blares through the recesses.

She is the longing in my heart that is permanent.