The Composition of Love

And I hear the requiem across her furniture.

My hands trying to find her, capture what is lost.

My fingertips like strings, evoking her disappearing voice.

Whilst I was asleep, she was slipping away from me.

So no harm would be done.

Silently, my name, my name, my name, in her mouth.

I dream of her and think of her death as surreal,

As something vague in the future.

I look at her face on the photograph and I know her skin,

Her touch,

Her laughter,

Her scent

Are all gone.

I conserve all of her in my muscle memory,

My own body.

She has become formless.

My heart moulds her anew every day.

I’m told to compose myself.

I compose her and all the good she stood for.

I will not apologise for loving her the way I do.

The faceless red glasses.

The books containing her time.

The painting of an open window above her bed.

The way she looks at me when I cry and whisper her name.

I think of her as if she wasn’t dead.

800px-In_a_rose_garden,_by_Lawrence_Alma_Tadema

“In a rose garden” by Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912)

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s