About Annie, My Love Past

 A Matador’s Lament for Annie - January 2023

In the cold embrace of January’s night,
I pen this verse, a soul’s quiet plight.
The Matador, once bold, now veiled in sorrow,
Faces a dawn devoid of promised morrow.

Annie, oh Annie, a name like a hymn,
Your absence leaves the world so grim.
We dreamt of love, not bound by time,
A poetic dance, a rhyme sublime.

Yet here I stand, a lone bullfighter,
Without my love, the world seems slighter.
An engagement broken, not by deceit,
But by dreams that refused to meet.

The car wash hums, a mocking tone,
A reminder that I am truly alone.
The foam and spray, once solace found,
Now echo Annie’s absence, profound.

I sought a world beyond the suds and water,
A life of verse, passion’s true harbinger.
But love, it seems, demands its own dream,
A shared path, a single stream.

Annie, with eyes like the Tulsa dusk,
Saw not in poetry, but in us, a trust.
Yet I, in pursuit of distant lands,
Let slip through my fingers, love’s sands.

The Matador writes, his heart in disarray,
A bull vanquished, in the arena of dismay.
For what is a poet, if not a seeker of truth?
In love, in life, in the fervor of youth.

So here’s to the love that might have been,
To Annie, my muse, my almost-queen.
May you find happiness, in realms I cannot give,
And in your smile, may I find the will to live.

• The Matador