A Ghost Story

I THOUGHT IT WAS YOU

We made the silence
birthed and flavoured it
when you held me there,
balanced in your eyes,
on a bed of shed petals.

I don’t know who broke it
but I thought it was you
tearing others’ worlds apart
in search of who we’d been,
the quick blend of us that soared
above this gritty granite world,
in the way the rivers run,
the way the sea receives them.

Or did I deceive you
because I knew I could never
conjure the silence again?
It was already a spent thing,
belonged in the moment before,
potential still wrapped by promise,
web after web of unknowns.

It was a two-person conspiracy
but I can’t make myself sorry
I felt such enormous hope,
didn’t yet know
that moment had made us
ghosts of all we’d been
entwined.