random attack of poetry

[whitereflection]

title: Songsense
pairing/Rating: Dean/Sam, G
note: Dean POV, post 5x22 Swan Song. can be read as standalone or as post-"Gazing".





Songsense


Your song's still stuck in my head.
Every now and then I can still hear bits and pieces of you--
a line, something something,
and then your refrain sneaks up on me
when everything's quiet
and I've forgotten to think about other things.

**

I don't smell your pillow or your faded old shirts.
I'm no swooning, pining
romance novel heroine;
the hell I'm going to press my face into the places where you're gone
and breathe in yesterday.
I'd hit you
if you were here
for believing I'd grieve like some heartbroken schoolgirl like that,
Or maybe I'd hit you
just to remember how your skin felt beneath my hands.

**

But I guess I'll think about you
when I'm at some bar smelling of years of cigarettes and
Michelob, Coors, and Bud,
when the scent of aged fryer oil and a griddle that needs cleaning
reminds me of that last time we played pool
and you were grinning easy
and laughing.

**

If I turn off the radio, I can sometimes
still hear you singing--
first humming under your breath,
then mouthing along with words you think I don't hear,
the wheels on the road as your bassline
to the rhythm of mile marker metronomes.

**

I won't realize how long I didn't taste anything
after you
until flavor comes back all at once,
like my tongue's Oz turned color from black and white,
and for the first time since
I won't feel guilty that I enjoy having to eat.
The diner jukebox will be playing all my favorites,
the lunch special will be perfect hot and the pie fresh warm--
so good, so good,
even without you sitting across from me.
(But it'd taste even better if you were,
because you're just the right amount of salt.)

**

There's still a space that walks next to me.
If I look back, I can see your shadow behind me,
stretching out to all the places we've been
like a bookmark you left between our pages.
I stand carefully on the end of it to hold it in place
so you can always come back to the paragraph where we left off
if you wanted.

**

I'm singing your song--
do you hear it?
I sang low at first, just to myself, just enough to hum
through my jaw and skull,
but now I'm singing you out loud, my throat rough and raw,
so you echo off the windows of this car karaoke.
If you don't remember all of your words
(like I do)
you can always sing along with your chorus;
everyone always remembers that part.
Feel free to join in
ifwhen you come back.
I'll be drums on the steering wheel and you'll be air guitar,
just like always.
We've always sounded best as a duet anyway.