In the icy depths of sleep, in dreams, you held me when I was no one,
just myself, a shell

You held me at the edges where I could have been anyone,
but wasn’t—

and in sleep, in dreams, is where I miss you the most

For making me believe I was someone, made better, through you

(Is that all we are to one another? An admirer of shells, who sees some beauty in the same? Who hears a song in the silence, who makes an instrument of me, a reason to be?)

In the icy depths of sleep, I am no different than the rest—
it’s you who made me see myself differently.

Categories: identity, poetry

Tags: existentialism, identity, loss, love poem, William Pearse writer