across my face.

I saw spring coming
in the meadow
where the wildflowers
whisper to the wind.

found freedom on a snowcapped mountain top,

smiled to the child offering violets
cradled in her tiny hands

and when she smiles to me

her joy ripples like sunlight
across the sea of love.

the curtain is lifted.

the soul becomes visible

(always in the wild places
in my heart.)

With a week to live
how would you live it?

Sulk?
Celebrate?
Would it be different?

Would you reminisce
on your livelier days?

Or love
in the last of them
every which way?

It hurts in places
I never knew existed.
Like how my fingertips ache,
and a mournful scream
lives in the back of my throat.

There is a black hole
where my heart once lived,
dense and ravenous,
swallowing light,
devouring warmth,
collapsing joy
into nothing.

Some days,
the void feels large enough
to consume me,
completely.

But still,
I wake.
Still,
I breathe.

And somehow,
without noticing,
I’ve grown strong enough
to carry it.
Not because the pain has lessened,
but because it’s changing me.

Sometimes,
the pain wants to cry out
I love you
loud enough
to reach you.

But those words
would fall into a silence
you no longer fill.

I wish I’d said them
a thousand more times
when they still had
somewhere to land.

I wish I could say
I love you
instead of
I loved you.

But if this grief
is just love
with no place to go,
I will ache
in all these new and strange places.
Willingly.

And I will wake up every day,
and breathe, one breath at a time.

Because this pain
is simply love,
wearing a different skin.