It is your face, that sweet light, that lingers.

Eyes direct, desire and mischief, then dark with thought;

Lips so full, your natural smile, the one that curls your mouth into a cock-eyed grin;

Not the smile so coldly perfect it dazzles, but the one with the crooked worried lower lip, the one of love and loss and uncertainty; the one that invites. I hadn’t expected it.

A crowd like a blur passing; sounds a jumble, then fading; time like crystal, stopping.

And we, the day before unknown, stood seemingly still at the center of that swirl expecting without reason the other would be there.

That is that tease, that wink, your moist tongue on an open mouth. Come. Love, the mystic dark energy.

The taste of each, searching, giving.

Lying together, your face would be soft, your skin like powder; your eyes would flash with desire, then darken with question; a kiss for each, lingering lips to taste your light.

What holds as the edges fray to atoms, and the atoms rattle like time into memory?

To old men in straw hats rocking on a shaded porch, mopping away time with white handkerchiefs, we would be a dream, a ripple in the dimness of youth. “I remember her,” one would say, and the others would nod; shared nostalgia, forgetting the surprise, the joy, then the void, the memory painless.

What should have been stillness, was motion.

Instead of staying, we ricocheted.

Collided, the emotions raw; spun away bruised, trailing an ache behind, unsettled mist.

Curse the old men and soft remembrances, the fog of time. Curse the distance, the loss.

Bless instead your open soul and the light that lingers.