Cocoon – a poem by Sam Rose

Cocoon

 
I wish I could have taken a picture of the way you looked at me right then.
Your gaze cocooned me, cast a warm glow that darkened the rest of the room.

I try to recapture it when I close my eyes because it reminds me that there
are better things in the world than what I can see right now, that there
are wonderful things in my world, despite everything.

You wanted my words but I didn’t know what to say because
…….everything had fallen out of my chest days before.

Since then, empty, I had wanted to return to you and listen to your fullness –
eager to know the colours of your world,
to see that in the stained glass windows of the chapel where you sat,
there was a rainbow mosaic brightened by the sun
and that, though in a dark place and far away, I was still one of those colours.

In terms of words, I can only give you my worst right now,
but inexplicably, you still want them.

I have very little to give but you take it and reassure me
with your cocooning gaze, with your cocooning arms,

that it is enough.

Sam Rose is a writer and editor from Northamptonshire, England. She is the editor of Peeking Cat Poetry Magazine and The Creative Truth. Her work has appeared in Scarlet Leaf Review, Poetry Pacific, Haiku Journal, In Between Hangovers, and others. Sam is a cancer survivor and primarily uses her experiences with this to write poetry and memoir.