People don't always come along the path of the heart for eternity

People don't always come along the path of the heart for eternity, To stamp their seal upon your soul, to inscribe their name on the floor of your pain. We can't always tell them apart as flourishing travelers or shipwrecks, Some are here to hold your hand through dusk and withdraw when dawn rises. They hug you when the world seems gray and leave the coolness of their fingers on your veins, When color returns to your cheeks, they say farewell and depart. Sometimes they're just silhouettes in the half-light, Spectators of the triumphs you've laid down alone. They're not meant to stay until the final curtain falls. You feel, ah, how wrong it is to want gifts from those who cannot give, To ask water to quench your thirst from one who is but ash. Some people aren't born to be anchored in the harbor of your life, But are like the midnight wind, like grains of sand that slip through your fingers, Or like the first stars that appear in the sky and then extinguish at the coming of the sun. And in this waltz of comings and goings, you learn to hold, not with clenched fingers, But the memories of touches, the warmth that was, the sound of steps together on the path. We learn that every person is a poem, some short, others in boundless verses, And we are readers between the pages, searching for the next stanza to live, to love, Even when we ourselves follow our own solitary path, stepping forward into the darkness of time.