the loss was a slow ache
creeping in like ice fog
after the time for mourning
should have been tolled

a gravedigger clearing dirt
grain by grain
was this heart-
stalling on the burn

proclaimed problem-free to public ears-
cleared like dust
from a smooth pane of promises
lifted like prints
from the scene of a
victimless crime

now the key loses
its lock
trapping that moment,
forever

in this web of
practicality
that we signed.

Setting down the icier path, my steps are sure.
The moon, launch-lost, hangs a tentative smile in the fading blue.
I spy the unfolding future in my compass face and deem it wise.
Thusly determined to keep my heart aimed at the sky.
You already set your course, Dark One, away from this wilderness, and into the wind.
So.
Here is where We end, and I begin.

and they did come, like rain, after a time
over the planes and rocks of her cheeks
pooling in the crevice beneath her nose
shining upon her lips in limpid drops

and in their wake

the promise of someday-sunshine on a sea of glass

There are cycles.

My pattern.
Two and fall.

and Some.
and Days.
and Now.

Here I am.

Again

missing the time in between
what was won't will be sometimes often
didn't

easy to forget the reasonable logic
behind the now seemingly nonsensical choice
that left you in the current Yearn.

the sweetsour regret, softly ignored scratches
the polish and veneer of worn out synapses
a  pleasantly blurred fastforward-lacquer

I skip the years like stones
pausing fingers on the page of a smile
turning my face away from  the cracks
stepping blithely over the day your words carried false

licking the envelope on an argument
stamped To Forget.

I choose

instead.

to love the memory of You.

Sometimes I feel it in my feet, a ripple
A puddle, then a pond
Windstorm rushing up my throat
Hurricane around my neck

Empathy Coat, wear me well

you will never
know and yet,
neither shall I,
what bruises  the wind makes
or the sorrows we
hide-

the skin shields we hold
the bone arrows we forge
for ourselves, by our kin
or the world at large.

So it is vast, and it is wide
it is small, it is fair
but I have no glass
nor other magic means
by which to
take you there.