We can see the cemetery gates from here,
but I am looking at you, at the way
the moon gently cups your cheeks in silver
hands, at the shadow that reaches from
your eyes down to your lips.
Maybe you’re my coven; yesterday
I was walking past your intersection
and I saw you in the leaves falling to the ground.
I thought I saw the way that your lips curl
into a smile in a tangle of barren tree branches.
I saw your gaze in the will-o-the-wisp,
your hands in the shimmer of candlelight.
Even now it feels like you’re not really
here and I wonder if you feel it too, like ghost lights
adrift in the woods behind my childhood home,
flickering in and out of memory.
How I wish I could feel the warmth of soul against skin!
Don’t drift away now. Please. Don’t
float off on that biting wind. I would plunge
through the veil of a cold October night,
through thickets and brambles, bloodied arms and all,
just to bring you home again.
