The resounding swiftness of our love,
that celebratory crashing sound:
I only now realize now that it was the breaking
apart of all the mirrors I've held up to the others,
trying in vein to make them a reflection of myself.

Instead of love, I found delusion - willing a
mirror over their unfitting silhouettes.

In my last moments of ocean-struggle,
as the buoyancy of hope left my body,
you were suddenly as ubiquitous
as the sunlight's rays.

You lifted me to land, and revealed through your
regenerative words the astonishing truth:
with you, no mirror is necessary.

You are my essential soul mate.

Already, the long-distance knowledge of your
vibrant heart has planted and sprung massive forests,
majestic mountain ranges, and this unexplored universe
(exponential everything, just like my love for you).

As dew forms steadily on the tenderness of plants,
you replenish my sunlight, my air, with molecules of you.

I will always hold sacred the already-fading past:

Strips of light
Clouds rushing by
The stark moon
---------------
I was very sick then
And knew what would never be touched
And the pale face slipped into the pale hands


I will do this, even if only so I may turn each
aching memory into a unique method of appreciating you.

No words could be deserving of even a single one
of your soft goodbyes.

Yet my words must tell you this:
with you, I am reborn.

With words I must offer you all that I am:
because the hope that you truly existed
is all that I have ever had as the years of
turbulent darkness enveloped me.

And that resilient, tiny hope lasted just long
enough until our gravity drew us inexplicably together, across thousands of miles.

So now, finally, we may begin
to release ourselves into living:
as I live now for only you,
I know you do so for me.

And what, Angela, in the incomprehensible vastness
of this universe, could be more?

08/16/2004

Posted on 08/16/2004
Copyright © 2026 Tom Goss