I keep your picture where the light can find it.
Morning light mostly, thin and honest,
the kind that does not flatter stone
or forgive the dust.
I look at her face
and something in me loosens,
like snow slipping from a pine branch
without sound.
I smile.
I always smile.
It startles me still
how the body remembers joy
faster than it remembers pain.
And I hate it too.
I hate that not one day has passed
that I have not thought of you.
Not one.
Time was supposed to do what time does,
weather the edges,
round the sharp corners of your name
until I could hold it
without bleeding.
But the mountain does not forget
the wind that shaped it.
The stone does not forget
the river that pressed its patience into bone.
There are evenings
when the sky goes the color of your eyes,
and I pretend this is coincidence.
I pretend I am not counting the years
like rings inside a felled tree.
I smile at your picture
the way a pilgrim touches cold granite,
knowing it will not answer,
knowing it still feels sacred.
It is a quiet thing, this loving.
It asks nothing now.
It only stands there,
like a ridge line against winter,
unchanged,
unmoving,
mine.