behind that smokey glass

it's just a kind of careless memory
spilling from slightly burned fingers
like grains of sand falling from a clenched fist---

your smile, your voice
all fading, greys and sepia tones
bleeding into night;
brown eyes turned dull with the
growing age of a crumpled photograph
and death, the only thing
that could have taken you from my arms
an eternal conqueror, grinning at me
for forever
because i'm no odysseus
armed with love and a lyre--- just a
broken-hearted achilles, wounded
by an arrow of fate.

maybe we'd have stood that chance
that fate, but for the quirk---
all love comes with a price
and a tree was ours;
a tree, and a bitter father
with blazing eyes and stony fists,
binding us to separate dreams
and separate lives:

could we have withstood that?

it wasn't the first time, for you;
nor i, in truth--- but some secrets are meant to be kept,
a silence that burns the heart
in truth and broken trust.

for you, i could have left that.

i did.

and our sanctity broken,
the golden ropes of gleaming light
fell to shattered shards, lying
rough and untutored in their arts
upon a floor not meant to be tread upon
by his booted feet. he bled the night
(artificial, perhaps, but true)
dry of joy; the destiny that we chose ourselves
in living; in loving.

someday, we'll know the truth:
for now...

rest in dreamless repose,
and remember mine.