selfsame face
no tempest heralded the hour and no omen stained the summer sky.?the world diminished by devotion, gentle as the lowering tide.
i laid my former life before us in increments too small to grieve:?an unbraided thread, a train unboarded,?the sacred habit of devoted loving.
the kettle sang; I knew your footsteps.?the evening bent to let you in.?how quietly can a home sanctify the slow erasure of its witness?
i mistook it for peace, unaware it may wear the selfsame face.
beloved,
my castle narrows to your doorway.
the map remembers seas and mountains, yet every road returns to you.
if love is meant to widen rivers, why have mine forgotten how to run?
i wear your name like borrowed scripture:?holy on my tongue, though somewhere in the recitation i misplaced my own.
the garden keeps its faithful seasons;?only i have ceased to bloom.
the birds still gather on the rooftop, bearing songs I never learned.
there are dresses in my wardrobe who mourn the woman they once knew;?she roamed without consulting constellations, she belonged to no pursuit but truth.
now every future speaks in plural, every hymn begins with "we."
and though your hands have never bound me, there is no farther shore I think to seek.
you have been nothing but warmth, yet to rain on my parade.
it is merely that i woke one morning and found the walls had drifted inward,
not enough to bruise, only enough for my heartbeat to echo back as yours.
beloved,
should every altar ask for offerings?
should every vow require a voice?
i would choose you a thousand gentle times.
i only fear that should the heavens ask me
who it is that stands before them,
i shall answer with your name
before i remember mine.
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