The Lantern I Oiled

 

I tended to a lantern through storms and drought

Fed it oil from my own aching ribs

Watched it flicker in the winds of doubt

Still; I held it; though the shadows fibbed

She was the garden I watered blind

Hoping roses would one day know my name

But thorns grew soft for stranger hands

While I bled steady just the same

She once nested in my chest at dawn

Sipping warmth from my quiet sun

Now she dances on another lawn

With a fire I was never shown

She weaves her light in golden threads

To clothe a frame that isn’t mine

While I stand naked in the dark

Threadbare from years I can’t rewind

The well I dug with hollow palms

Now fills her cup with someone new

And I am left with salted psalms

And echoes that no longer knew

She walks past like wind through ruins

Laughs in colors I’ve never seen

Gives her morning to his ruins

While I cradle night’s unseen

She didn’t leave in floods or flames

She faded; gently; every day

Like ink retreating from a page

She loved me less in silent ways

The feast I saved; untouched; unbitten

She now lays bare on foreign plates

And I; the starving; watch her give

What she kept locked behind my gates

I bite on memories till they bruise

Chew silence like it tastes of wine

Sleep beside ghosts I didn’t choose

And bleed where no one sees the line

There are echoes living in my throat

Of names I dare not call again

And smiles she wears I never wrote

They bloom for him while I rot in rain

I build altars from the parts she dropped

Worship the ache that won’t let go

Hold sermons in my shattered chest

And preach to gods that told me "No"

Some nights; I drown inside her laugh

Not the one I knew; but the one she grew

And I wonder if she ever hurts

Or if the pain just followed me through

How do you mourn the still-alive

How do you bury breath and bone?

She lives and laughs and loves out loud

And I am the grief she’s overgrown

The lantern's out The oil is gone

Still; I sit where I once was flame

And though she lit another dawn

I whisper her like it’s still my name

So let her bloom in borrowed light

Let her kiss where my prayers once fell

I’ll stay behind in endless night

A tale love wrote; but time won’t tell