Modern Romanticism

I decrease detail,
stomp out fragments,
among a dried up,
starving garden,
for there’s what remains
like echoes in a hallway.

There’s what’s fading
not fast enough.

It clings close,
stuck into skin
like shards of glass.

A mirror is all I broke,
a heart is the gem
I returned to its owner.

It takes time,
seconds I can’t waste,
severing your length,
your burning presence
on a sunlit shore.

It takes years,
a lifetime, one I can’t
keep reversing
like pages turning back
to our first word.

It takes a mind
I find hard
to not rewind
to that day.

It was that day
when we played
like children
who had thought
ashes were the same
as snow.