Does loss leave us
the same way it greets us?
Like eyelids that contract,
forcing a moment of withheld beauty,
of an unrealized, blank canvas,
before suddenly retracting,
revealing the brightest emerald irises
a higher power could possibly create,
one second, here
the next, gone.

The dilemma of departing loss
waxes and wanes in those eyes,
like a changing of the tides,
offering a frenzy of firing neurons
that scatters the chemistry of a solitary mind,
removing an addictive absence
in favor of a purer presence
those irises inject into my veins,
effecting a high that fades in our shadows,
only to reemerge in the beaming sunlight.