Blossoms Fall To Wind

The dawn touched the sky in rose, and gently
bruised her skin with light.
To be alive beneath her felt like bliss,
to breathe her hurt, and still ache for more.

In loving her, I knew myself;
she opened wounds of nameless sorrow,
gave name to desire.
Her light entered the river of my blood,
ran like wildfire in my veins.

A small-winged hope beat nervously in my chest,
half-trapped, half-scorched,
still alive, too afraid to die.

Love remains because it cannot surrender.

I could not measure anything against her,
nor praise her with the failures of the world.
Every beauty is lesser for knowing her-
what shall I compare her to, but loss?

Beauty does not last; only sorrow keeps it.

I wanted to wake in her what spring wakes in the earth,
the green fires of hiddenness.

So we could lie where silence ripens round breath and skin
like warm perfume,
forget our names,
and grow soft with indulgence.

Then we were still, the dark between us.
The night and our breathing, like mountains resting together.

Yet thirst remained, and tears gathered quietly,
moisture silvering the edges of abundance,
and the world returned in tides around us.

Then the mind returned
and dissolved the kingdom within me.

But what is reason, pale beside her touch,
but shadow measuring the aching memory of her,
but only silence after music in the blood?

Perhaps one day even sorrow will grow gentle in recall,
and time will tell sweet ruin.
Perhaps someday it will comfort us to remember this,
and bless what pain would not soften for our keeping.

We broke like weather; the mountains did not.
What shattered in us, stone endured.
And so we fell to seasons,
as blossoms fall to wind.

Still, the blood remembers fire,
and somewhere her light remains in me.
All that passed in clouds became the sky again.

I wish I could show you what survived.