My Victorian Book Shelf

Why is it when I read Oscar Wilde I think of you?
Were you there when he penned 'Dorian Gray'? Were you his muse?
Through all your pretence and performance, I can still read you.
No matter the winds or the waves of life,
I would not change you.

You are love and literature
The poetic and the poet
The hopelessness of hopefulness
The soulful and the lonely.
August evenings, Ryan Adams,
Records, wine and cigarette smoke.
The times I knew what I wanted
But not how I felt.
These are bittersweet memories and they speak for themselves
And they curl in the pages of novels on my Victorian Book Shelf.

It breaks my heart to read Oscar Wilde and see you there
I hide like Dorian Gray in what was once so fair.
Through all the pretence and games you play, I wish I still knew you
But I blinked and missed the winds and waves
That came and stole you.

You are the touch of a stranger
The devotion in a ransom note
The aching of a dry heart
The rocks that trip me as I walk.
Winter twilight, broken records,
Hot tears, cold hands, sleepless nights.
The moment I saw what I'd already lost
And forfeited the fight.
These are sweetly bitter memories
And they won't lose themselves.
So they haunt the dusty novels there
On my Victorian book shelf.