Within us

Love is a drowsy hand

held beneath quilt

and long after it has gone

you remember

the familiar warmth

and though the day is raw and filled with white clouds

you walk the dog through the uncut grass

remembering how it felt

to touch.

 

Love is a pain, sharp between your ribs

as if blunted knife has found purchase

to imagine one moment in this world, without you

and yet, so often

love is a terrible morning, waking in disbelief

you no longer walk beside me.

 

Then love is all you have

to hold onto, when the day swells and charges

emptiness spitting her spite in your face

your only recourse, to reclaim, that drowned memory

of when you were both without suffering

no worn streaks of tears tracing your jaw

nor the wink of life fitful, in the candle of your eyes

stillness, in yet unbroken reverie

stretching forever, because we do not think

of what it is to love on the other side of life

or how in love we choose a certain fate

and even if we had …

young then and without knowledge

been challenged with some slip of truth

many years down a well traversed road

I know your answer would be as mine.

 

even if love is fleeting, never captured long enough

even if, as first leaves budding on bare trees

are the most frail

they herald the coming of a new season

courageous enough to live briefest

yet with the glory of an entire summer

never fretting over loss, for it is not present in that moment

we loved for always

unbroken in a circle of flowers emerging

from frozen earth come such wonders

as fragile as petals we hold

each, within ourselves