Beneath golden-pink stars, you once
grasped my fingers twixt yours
and murmured, "The universe is a lonely place."
I could not understand then
what you meant, your words blasphemy
to my eager years.
How could the universe be anything but
bursting, joyful, welcoming
while you exist? I wondered,
not bothering to add, with me after it
because, after all, it was implied:
Our lives hand in a weary balance,
dependent upon the other.
I cannot exist without you
and you, my glorified disaster,
cannot exist without me.
It is an irreversible truth -
written into the lining of the universe
like the fact of gravity.

With you gone, I thought my soul would
crack in two,
but I survive.
A wretched existence.

The sun you wake to
will never quite be the sun I see.
Your moon will be a
pale imitation of the one I glimpse
before shutting my eyes to this
restless world.
Stilling my restless heart.

Under my feet the earth still turns
but it no longer shares its secrets with me or anyone
in this crowded city:
it is too big, too busy, too filled
with people always moving, breathing
being.
It has everything, this city,
except for you.

Surrounded by the bustle of all this life,
I finally understand your eternal
loneliness.