How does my story end.

How does my story end.

I did not want to see the end

Our faces fading black

I wanted to keep us here

In this eden

In these arms

But the earth

The blessed, knowing earth

Keeps sending smoke signals my way

And I wonder if this eden

Is perhaps only an illusion

Waiting for the right moment to decay

First the bracelet

That you gave

Dripping with love

Unraveled before my unwilling eyes

Next the air-dried rose

Preserved from our six months

Of childlike infatuation

Disconnected at the stem and ovule

And I wept upon its irreparable fate

Then the last, and most tragic,

Was my surprise gone awry:

I planned a gift for you

To say the apologies that my heart could not speak

I went to develop the film

Of our trip to the bandshell

When our candid embraces

Were snapped by our friends,

When we were still basking in eden

And in each other's

Love-saturated limbs

But when I went to remove the canister

From the vintage camera

The film was not inside it

But instead lay exposed to the light

On the canister's right

And all the stilled images

Of our still-then pure love

Were swallowed into blackness.

Written 12.7.09 @ 11:01 PM