These pools of light seeped up from the ground and gathered around our footfalls. You never seemed to know where they came from. You would reach down your fingertips and dip the length of your arm into brilliant waters, ever amazed that they were never ending.
Remember to pull out some drops for me.
(You were here. Never forget that and never deny, no matter how far you go, or how long you stay from my world. That one day, that one, you were here.)
Our hands intertwined we were molded as delicate flowers. This is my aura seeping onto your heart; this is you choosing to take it. We would walk until we could walk no more and laid down beneath the outstretched branches of some dying willows, where I would count out the leaves until I could feel from your breath that you slept. How well did you sleep that night? Me?
I stayed up and watched for the falling stars, and the bands of time making a game of the hairs on your chest. I stayed up the whole night through.
When you woke you had nothing to say. Nothing. Nothing without the stars. Do the moonbeams still follow you now? When you woke I was too tired to tell you the truth, and so you wandered off alone to find another to tell all of these things you hadn’t found in our silence.
I waited for you to never return.
Standing in a pool of watery mist like a sunset, I was always surprised by the white-yellow clouds that started gathering in the twilight at my feet. I’d thought they were yours. But maybe all along they were mine, and I’d let them surround you. Maybe they were ours, and we both walk the earth now, no matter how many miles and dreams and destinies apart, leaving tiny trails of fading incandescence in our wake. This is my sorrow and my beauty and my love. This is ours.
(I watch for the signs of an approaching off-white glow from inside my eyelids. I watch for it knowing you were here. I watch for it far away where I’ve forgotten, and here where I’ll never forget.)
May the darkness treat you well.