SOMETIMES, shadows walk like people
and talk senseless things—
sometimes geometry is just chance,
and broken numbers need to dance,
and Jack of Diamonds sheds the Queen of Hearts,
and her eyes are the swords of conflict,
the shape of your heart → broken love.
If I told you that I loved her—
you’d think something wrong;
just a man wearing many faces.
If I told you I loved you—
I met a woman with love hid in many places.
I know the space, the size of a soldier,
and the clubs of cards—
→ it’s not the shadow I walk.
Yet still the dusk leans in, listening,
as though it knows the truth of men:
that every borrowed face we wear
is stitched from longing’s ancient thread.
And sometimes dreams outrun their keepers,
seeking forms they cannot fill;
and sometimes hearts, like worn-out decks,
shuffle themselves against their will.
But here I stand—no mask, no mirror—
beneath the quiet, faithful moon,
confessing to the old night sky
that love, once loosed, returns too soon.
And if my steps seem split in two,
one toward her, one toward you—
know this: the heart, bewildered, still
chooses the path that feels most true.
For even when shadows walk like people,
and numbers break, and queens depart—
somewhere a single, steady flame
remembers the shape
of your
heart.
:: 11.16.2025 ::
E.P. Robles | Poetry 
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