Many speak of love in spring of their lives but I felt the winter deep set in my bones when I was young. A stone cold dessert of bone and ash the pieces of my life irrevocably torn from me before you had found me in my hollowed out hell. You were the first light I could see through the fog. Behind the curtain of our prude faith we hid our bodies in each other. And all that was ash was suddenly silk and satin.
It was a a failed baptism to be born into this world stuck beneath the surface drowning in a guilt not my own and a shame in my heart. Never before had I felt air like you breathed into me in that book store corner our faces flushed and barley touched.
I am sure I was to be pulled into the drink if not for your love. Your kindness and rawness shown back at me in that fire you carried in your hair and your eyes. At just 16 and now at 28 you have been gone longer then I ever knew you and yet the memories feel longer still. I still see movement behind that veil but you are not behind it and I am haunted by that shadow. I still feel the heat of your fire, but it is the shadow of a forever fading warmth to never truly leave and let me chill and yet to never find the breadth to allow me true comfort. I fear I am to become a wraith in your absence although I walk forever in the sun you showed. Over the hunch of the earth I have traveled now, seeking my comfort. Seeking your fire again and if I am to become a wraith, of ash with only the memory of fire to torment me until my end I will be grateful it was your fire. And when I fade even as a wraith into the cusp of the world and the void takes my memory of you I will find you again in that place. Never have I been so sure that I lost the love of my life. I have returned to winter knowing warmth and am more and less for it.
And I wouldn’t trade it for gold.
I love you. And I always will.