I once told myself that poets shouldn’t love,

Even if it's what we do best.

Loving and losing-

An art, chaotic and disastrous,

as unavoidable as fate

As dangerous as poison

I let myself love him

Let myself cling to his voice like a life line in a sea of darkness

Let his words thread themselves into my skin

because what alternative was there to loving him?

To forget?

Forget, even when my skin remembers his skin

Memorized it - like a musical prodigy to its favored instrument

Forget, even when my lips, my tongue remembers,

the shape of his name, the feel of the words “I love you.”

I let myself remember him

remember how the sun could thread gold into his dark curls

And turn his eyes into molten pools of amber

remember how his laugh could melt the ice around my heart

Make her bloom under his smile, like a sunflower under the sun

Make her weep in his absence, as a sunflower in the night

I will remember

vows written with teeth and calloused hands

secrets entrusted, delivered -broken- on bruised knees

Both of us, allowing ourselves

to shatter

completely,

for eachother

because only we know how to make eachother whole again

I will remember

nights, under my ceiling of rose and nectar and stars of woven gold

Where our memories hung above us in hues of black and white and sepia

Where below them we made new ones

I will remember

how it felt to love you

And as I have written before:

When the sun has become but a silvery ghost in the sky

and the pines -withered and faded- mimic our skin and our eyes

When the earth is a landfill grey petals and frost

save them in sealed glass, look upon them and

Remember me

Know that our love is not lost