Scent Of Absence

I like you like the sun likes heat
Before the drought and the retreat
Of pulses, once so loud and sweet.

I liked you like the first rains’ scent
On thirsty soil where we both went,
Before the summer’s strength was spent.

I hate you for the scent you kept
In tangled sheets where we once slept;
The hollow space where I have wept.

I hated you, but shadows grow
Like winter grass where nothing flows:
A cold that only silence knows.