Mourning the Manacle

You lassoed me with words
Not the coarse sentiment of cowboys
Languishing for human touch and concern
amid cold prairie mounds and cattle pens of people.
You lassoed me with lariats of raw silk
Spun in poetic discourse without temperate distillation  
Over steaming cups of coffee
with letters typed in heated hopes
You lassoed me with agendas unspoken
Illusionary conversations from the mind of a madman
Reaching for who he knows he’ll find
But can never let loose within himself
You lassoed me with a past time
Where housekeepers were never allowed to dust
Disturbing dreams or the dreamers who wrestled in sleep
Making love to possibilities because the present was done and too hard
to accept
The lariat braided “for 25 years,” you said
“searching for me there would be no end,”
Of leaving me never again
But I had to cut off all my hair to free the entrapment of silk web
Tying my head, yanking it backward
To cry out in disbelief that you could not
Would not trust me enough to listen
You pulled the lariat wound tightly
around and through me
Close enough that I felt your breath, tasted your warmth against my skin
As I slept 300 miles away from you
with your hands in my hair
Muscled strength of arms spent saving other lives except your own
bent to pull me beneath your heart.
I had to cut my hair to unwind silk lariat
keeping myself from breaking trust twisted in your marriage vows.
Didn’t you hear me? I can never be who you need me to be
When so many hopes ride on a cowboy’s anguish
Putting away what has been because of what is
I wanted to touch you
To be what you know is true .
I could not look you in the eye and take off the blinders
I intentionally placed
Or you might breathe again and come alive in something foreign
Not too far from what you believed could be
But I can never show you

I hung your unbraided lariat next to the unadorned cowboy’s saddle
Ridden in determination proving you are more
than you think you are
more than the trophies and commendations  
proving so much
only to those who don’t know you.
I already knew who you still are.
I will love you from where you have to stay
and honor how
You have created
The cowboy in your own image.