How little we know, in the end. That a boat
can stall at the edge of the sea, until it is
overturned, at last, by what it loves most.
That love is the fortress with no walls
and winding gardens. That time gnaws
us down to a new bone, then to pure spirit.
And that grief is a kind of church—it is
that sparse and that clean. It is the blue rose
held in the clear water of the mind, is a
marble of honey sealed inside a pitcher
of salt—is, in this way, sweet at the core.
But my tongue is made stone. And my heart,
a stone trying to draw milk from another
stone. Here is your body, sweet and solemn
witness. Here is your crown of silence.
Here is your hand, itself a kind of voice
in the dark. Here is your skin, a white flower
blossoming and blossoming again. It is only
the cracked light that now separates us, a
quiet door you have passed through. It is
not you who has gone. It is the sky, now
lowered, that has come to walk with you.