It gathers
The morning takes its share. A slice of breath, a fingertip of warmth. The small pulse I saved for myself. My palms open like bowls the light pools and vanishes. I am thinning by degrees. Becoming the smoke that memory exhales.
Something is leaving. The air restless with departure. The sky pulls itself taut, a long muscle straining towards elsewhere. I taste distance on my tongue, iron rich, bitter, inevitable. The birds have stopped asking questions. They just go.
You. Or maybe the idea of you, have gone past the place my mind can reach. Farther than maps, past the naming of things. The world folds itself into boxes, tidy with the absence of sound. Even my thoughts walk softly now, so they wont wake what's gone.
The body grieves in strange ways. It bruises without touch. It hums in the cavities, it becomes a chapel for silence. I light myself like a candle, watch the wax tremble on my wrists. The flame does not pray. It only consumes.
I keep offering the gentleness. The bright scraps of laughter, the small obedient love of the living. The air takes everything. It thanks me for my service.
Sometimes I dream of the sea. How it moves, endless and alone, how it gathers every sorrow. But it still returns to shore. I think that's what I am meant to be. A tide that forgets what its lost. A body that learns to go on.
Still, I am the altar.
Still, I am the bread.
Still I whisper into the hollow, " Take what's left, take it all."
And the world patient and open mouthed. Does.