By Jason Zapata

You wrap your soft arms around me,
Press against the statue I’ve become.
And gaze into eyes staring past you.
“Why won’t you say anything…?”

Questions posed to the inanimate.
This rigid expression has no answer.
Unmoving lips offer no response,
No evidence of the stirring within.

Tell me how to be moved
By things you say. You feel.
Can it be sincere, too?
Because there’s a big difference
Between what you say and do.
In the distance between the two,
I cannot find the way.

There is no fissure in this façade.
You converse with a monument,
A sculpture you crafted with hands
Too weak to chisel or break it apart.

“Don’t you feel anything at all…?”
I give no response or rejoinder.
Such questions cannot influence
Senses and sentiment within stone.

Tell me how to be moved
By things you say. You feel.
Can it be sincere, too?
Because there’s a big difference
Between what you say and do.
In the distance between the two,
I cannot find the way.