The Long Shadow
He said I will never be alone—
but when I look into the dark
nothing looks back.
I walk my treacherous path
with only fragments:
echoes,
trembling poems
and a moment of grace.
Trusting in absence,
keeping the wound open
in a darkness
too thick to breathe.
And yet I walk.
Not because I see—
but because I remember
how he walked,
and that is all I have.
His promise stays with me
like a thread pulled through water—
felt,
but nearly lost.
At times hope
is the thinnest thing—
a shimmer at the edge of the dark
that keeps me from fleeing.
I walk as a flickering flame,
knowing at every step
the wind might snuff me out.
I do not trust the path—
but something in me
burns for the beloved.
I was loved once
without condition.
I was known.
The divine
passed through this body —
once.