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How Many?
J. Scott Smith
How many ways can I say it, I love you, and remain unheard?
How many ways can I show it, I want you, and still be denied?
How many days must I need you, unmet, yet faithful, undeterred?
How many nights must I crave you, unsated, unfilled, lain aside?
Once upon a lonely time, all alone and lost in fantasy
I found you and fell, and fallen, a tale I tell of your beauty
Your spirit and love, your laughter and smile; but you, you forgo me
With promises and pledges, mere words, but never love, not truly
In you I wish a reality, then delude myself believe
Knowing full well its improbability, yet still cling to it
As possibility and think it a gift I may yet receive
By patience and persistence, and pleading prayer, perchance you permit
But you: It seems in me you see what you wanted your life to be
Yet not exactly, for what you want is not me but a likeness
Of me that cannot be, for what is me is what you cannot see
Which is a he like me cannot be seen where you seek to find us
So we have me, with my illusion and yet without delusion
Knowing my wanting is but a foolish imprudence I indulge
And we have you, with your quest for a solution, but confusion
As to what it may be and where, so life does no answer divulge
How many ways? Perhaps the wrong question has been asked, for maybe
It is not ways, but rather a difference in the number of days
How many days? Perhaps years, for days and days have passed already
No matter ways or days, still my nights replay, solitary plays
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