they used to be rooms grand and wide as hotel suites but it was you, and i wanted life and it just so happened i had this cabin, out in the woods where the night sky horizon was free from the glare of artificial lights i knew you love the moon and stars though they were always pale compared to your eyes and your smiles
we had everything we needed: us. for the things we wanted no trek was too long or boring, everything and everywhere the mundane shed their old clothes to reveal their secret selves between our senses dancing waltz, house, rave, tango, our fingers like vines, with your head on my shoulder i discovered the true gift of time
but one day i came to an empty room i waited, perhaps you were out on your solitary musings just like i at times crave for my own it was facebook who told me you were alive and well by your distant self happy even without me
knowing about not knowing without you, i wondered should i raze the cabin to the ground? defile every memory for the surgery i could not find nor afford? i sought for familiar pattern and routines should i sweep the floor laced with soil and minerals collected by our four feet? should i straighten the sofa, the fallen lamp, prop the pillows and unravel smooth the tangle of sheets and blankets shaped by our last nightβs passions? these and all others, preparations for when you would come back
somewhere, somehow from all the waiting and musings it came to me in the silence of the end that was never happening
there is no reason for housekeeping for this is no longer our home
after i stepped out and closed the door the faint memory of the purpose of keys the dirge of the open faucet they did not matter you
you. who is⦠where are you? who is you? ah, there is only me
feet on the earth, i felt myself rooted veins charting out paths to subterranean passages through rocks and buried things while my eyes saw again the stars and moon
and so before the ashes from dead stars could find themselves and gather in my pockets i tilt my fedora to my right eyes rimmed and clear as lenses walking out of that place the faint memory of a cabin of someplace with someone carved out from the woods and bushes reclaimed once more by wild roots and cold fires.