I spectate a sharp face,
once capable of temptation,
shift to an eerie expression,
In the afterglow of a flame
I can no longer cultivate.

Sweaty palms and apprehensive affection; this is the way I loved you. Learning to fall and falling, falling hard. Maybe it’s just me but I hope you’re falling too. My palms have been held shut for a while but I think I’m learning to open them again.
Naked trust, a newly found intimacy. An unearthed sacred romance, softly shaped by sensuality and tenderness. I hold an incessant desire for more time, always for more. This is the way I loved you.

For the price of patience
she was gifted with the opportunity to heal,
and received a foreign feeling in return for her strength;
the type of love
she had dreamt of.

She pressed her palms together
and prayed to be desired with purity,
free from lust and deceit.
“What waits for me behind the horizon line?”

You’re pale year-round,
though you have a new warmness beneath it.
With complete faith in the universe,
You are growing beautifully.

I’ve kindled my body back into the earth. She stretched her arms wide and embraced me tenderly. I have time to tend to my garden again and I’ve seen what it really means to bloom. Vulnerability, once cataclysmic to the garden, became the set of seeds that were worth waiting for. Welcomed by the soil, the sky and the clouds, my flowers and my fruits grow in abundance.

I have watched grief hollow you out.
Your body is no longer illuminated by an open heart.
Since the spiders crept in
the warm, gentle glow has been
smothered
by cobwebs.