Pale and sleeping and still
he is masked in the shadow of the chimney
The eastern horizon a fresh wall of wet paint dripping
with the futures that stretch ahead of you in
the reincarnation of the sun:

One, of smoldering funeral barges and
watching winter gardens bloom alone
The other, seeing his eyes crinkle at the edges
and the way the left side
of his mouth cinches with every
knowing smirk and
never letting go,
at least not yet, not yet, not
now.

But still the sun rises with a rebellious glint
and a bitten lip and with birds
singing softly to a mist lazily draping
over the skyline like a fine dust settling
over the shingles of an
unfixed
roof.

He doesn't want to be forgotten, but you
you know that the stars will sing for two
a chorus of immortality.

And walking backwards
because everything he is leaving behind is so
different
that he can't bear to tear his eyes from it all
He surrenders to the gravelly path and lets the
grey wash him away.

You plead with the sun, casting a fine golden spider's web over the world
And with funeral pyres and
two winter wildflowers dancing in your eyes
To the rhythmic sweeping of a brush
on a fresh wall of wet paint
You search his features for a
familiar crinkle,
a left-side-cinch, but

Pale, not sleeping, yet still,
he is masked in the shadow of the chimney.