Like all the rest, you too will learn to forget,
when spring sets in with hail and thawing wet.
You’ll trickle from my face, from parchment night,
while all the world laughs green and bursts with light.
Vanitas vanitatum dixit Ecclesiastes,
Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas.
You won’t recall the solitude we shared,
how heaven’s buttressed ramparts split and bared;
we were the breadth of splintering creation,
we were awareness and a burning oblation.
Upon God’s altar lay the fractured host,
one substance in two bodies, darkening to ghost;
with fingers interlaced we burned, hand into hand,
I scarred myself to you—we two were one, one brand.
A masquerade within the halls of God;
snow drifts on us, our buckling shoulders nod.
Winter again; the stroke of midnight’s dread—
upon this earth, the ghosts go forth and tread.