Matters of Muse

Prompt #2

I’d like to carve your existence into mine,
Through paper, canvas, rhythm, or rhyme.
I’d like to carve your existence into mine,
Freeze this moment and engrave you to time.

I tried memorising through touch,
Traces of your skin on my fingertips,
Your strawberry-scented promises on my lips,
And every crook, curve, coil on your thighs to your hips.

And afterwards I tried committing touch into words,
To describe your form into poetries, sculpt your edges from memories
Each word carefully selected, thought of, and considered
Every nook and crook slowly carved and configured.

But no word, no mould, no edges, no melody
Can imitate the raw imperfections marring your body
Your scars on my poetry, pottery, effigy, painting, song, symphony
— they don’t tell the same story as the ones in my memory.

Because no paper, canvas, rhythm nor rhyme
Can ever etch your existence into time.
No paper, canvas, rhythm nor rhyme
Can engrave your existence into mine.

My eyes haven’t gazed a parallel to your beauty,
And so my senses gave up stamping artworks with traces of you in a starstruck reverie.
Now I revel in one joyful, painful, and rather spiteful epiphany,
That some beauty is only to be seen and committed nowhere else but one’s memory.

Prompt: a poem about poetry