Originally posted 4/10/2010.

she was wisteria, wisteria in its short bloom;
she was warm days and cold nights
in mud season when grass blades
begin to rise from the soil
where they’ve been hiding. 

she was remarkable, and i was lost
as soon as she left me, though it was a night
and a day and a night again before i could cry
for her, a long numb sweep
of hours in succession.

i wept in the privacy of the bedroom
that was newly empty. i emptied myself.
i cried more as the walls inside me melted
and i sweated them out. i was paper thin after.
light passed through me and from within i was lit.

this is grief, i said, and it is a cold wind.
this is unseasonable weather.  
the flowers on the early vines shriveling.  
this is her doing, i told myself.  i said,

i have been illuminated by her.  i shine. 
she was more than i had thought to say of her,
some sun of a distant unglimpsed sky
over a world i hadn’t explored, and i cried again,
and i still do. 

she was
wisteria,
forsythia;
the very bones
of spring unedited
by interpretation; 
she was a sun i will not see again;

i have entered a twilight of weeping
where i indulge the urge
to create and recreate the moment
when i lost my chance
to stop and listen to her
and let her expand within me
as i should have. 

the moment of loss
is deep weather,
a season of interruption
when the simplest answers go unnoticed. 
i should have been motionless
and perhaps i could have held her here,
or perhaps not. 

she was wisteria,
she had her time,
then was gone.
i remain.
i weep, i shine with her within me,

though i light nothing around me.