Brevity of Light

I’m walking the spacious realm between solar systems.
I taste the richness gratefully, inhale its dark memories,
lay down in the softness of loneliness and hum to you,
my own self, because we are never separate, the agony
of distance never arose for us, for anyone, at any time,
so how can we now be sad, or ever crave extinction?

However I would like to be done unto, I’ll do unto you,
my beautiful friend, my eternal playmate, darling lover
of this infinite mystery. I will become the refuge for which
you long when it all falls apart, the hope when it dims,
then disappears, leaving everything just the way it is —
perfect, unknowable, exquisitely poignant, terrible.

Oh, pay no attention to this incipient wail, this lilt
of incoherence. I’m walking now between solar systems,
between the times that demand judgment. I’ll be ordinary,
nothing special, just a friend when you need one, even
if it’s the last friend you will ever need, before the change,
before your homecoming, the warm reception, the nostalgia
for what it once seemed to be, when we came close enough
to share the same vital breath, the same body, mind, self.

I look back now and see a play of shadows, why expect
anything more — this idiot light flowing across the canvas,
illuminating nothing, yet shining brightly all the same,
for love, for just one more moment with you, even as we
unravel together, twin flames in a wild wind, in the ecstasy
of our long darkness, pierced by the searing brevity of light.