silence was a language
whose words we borrowed
to be whispered by our eyes
when we had to say goodbye.

fades in the distance to blink us a bridge
whose pillars, arc, and breadth,
each stone and each step designed
as inspired by our first night vow
to bind us more than by blood
across the garden of stars and night.

so that when the light finds us,
the words of silence will be spoken
again in our smiles before we shape
each other in each other’s arms
where our voices births a warmth
to rival that of dawn’s first rise.

now, in your absence that is bleak
as my sighs that even darkness denies,
has silence always been this barren?

when i breathe as if with dust and ashes
gathering so it may reshape my mortal heart.

because there is no forgetting,
there are certain days, like a roll
from a seven-sided dice
when i think of you
they happen less and less as you
became more fluent with silence

but today i woke up
from a fading dream where you
were as you were, and since then
under the eye of the sun and the stars
i have become as if prey
hounded by my thoughts
always straying to find you

i miss you and i have been thinking of you
until now at the very least
with the constancy as mortals
need to breathe and heart to beat

i wonder where and how you are, now
while i listen to this silent night sky
once the bridge we built together
to bind even our closed eyes

with the tired and aching memory of you

to discover that strain of silence
i avoid as if plague born and sworn
claim to take shape and root
like the pathways of my veins,
drinking from my mortal heart  
so now i gaze as if with eyes born  
with the light of unnamed stars,
wind trace forgotten sigils on my skin,
fingers touch and trace as if laced
with the kiss and embrace of desire.  

i would be grateful, and speak,  
as only love between pen and paper
fresh and wet with ink or with blood,
the name of the altar for this naked fire  

but there has only been silence
now i claim for my own, and all  
this silence seek is only silence,  
born to spawn to feed and breathe  
an infinity of itself and in between.

you could have chosen
exile or as a lone passenger
in the transport of time
across vast waters to an isle
uncharted in any map;
kept as a secret, like the poetry
you wrote and i read without
knowing it kissed and caressed
more than just my name and face.  

naked as we were even before  
the dark where we peeled  
from each other’s skin and touch
the cold and dust of yesterdays,
it must have been terrifying to dare
against a fate lonely and beautiful,
still, with an elemental force that raced
to bind wind and sky from north to south
you declared that i, a prisoner of wonder
to how it must be to be loved by you
be set free.  

for this reason, and perhaps only this  

my eyes will always seek and trap the light
for the harvest offered when to you again i gaze,
a pilgrim to the province of memory
where everything that persists: streets,
gardens, houses under the stars
breathes and whispers of you and only you,
as lips will move while my tongue trace  
each syllable of your known and secret name
until for last breathe this mortal heart.

it began with the fingers of day  

parting the dark and cold to reveal
fresh and green succulent cruelties  
arousing one’s appetite the desire:  

to be a blind witness
in how your absence  
bleach color and bleed form.  

to be deaf to wind fall fail  
find their morning melodies
for without your voice  
there can be no song.  

a brand new day in the season of waiting  
until you would arrive in sight or hearing.  

but now i no longer count the ways
i gather the body of each day  
to join the corpses of yesterday:  

there is only this, and every night,
among promises written with salt or in sand,
a cancer without end, or cure
eating me up while i endure.

from infernal tongues devouring
wood and concrete edifices,
to the brief yet joyful life spark
from a match lit as if to breathe
soft and tender so that a solitary candle
may flame a vigil against cold and night,
i have seen and endured those lips,
yet none proved to be a feast
more than the fires of friendship
like the one we named ours:

solitary embers fated to a lifetime of wait
until we allowed them to share names,
speak secrets and whispers desires,
fingers like the poles of stars
joined together as it peeled away the covers
wrapping our pains, tragedies, and shames.

yet even as i desired for each grain of sand
be allowed to trace the shape of our feet
while shore and sea lined each kiss,
i did not forget the fate of fires.

even now i can still feel the warmth
as if your hand was still pressed
against my own, ghost friction
from the fiction of our devotion
i now allow the wind to claim
for it flows into them, by their names,
to scatter these ashes away.