Realms

I can't believe I didn't die that evening.  Fallen in the fire.  Broken on the edge of sunlight.  Perhaps I should have died.  Maybe I was supposed to.  But I didn't. Not completely.  Lying there in the grass and the dusk, beside steel and sidelines.  Imagining lampyridae all about me, like the rain was rising and aglow.  Like the stars came down to kiss me.  Perhaps it was just my life flashing, as my eyes deigned to close.  You know, I still believe I didn't die for nothing.  Because I get to hear the sounds of how they find you.  The way you give back, my courageous one.  All beneath a tide that's rising.  I can guide you, if you'll let me.  But I can never speak the future for you.  Not directly.  I can't commemorate what's to come, flute in hand and clinking glass.  I wish I could, my darling, but there are some things an angel just isn't allowed to say.  It's the difference between ghosts and men.  Fantasies and fireflies.  But I hope you sense the breadth of care in all the things I can never tell you.  Like the sweet pride your Mother has in her daughter’s lyricism.  Or the depth of your Father's gratitude.  I'm treading waves in a seashell, princess, to better the bruise.  Maybe I can reach us if nobody moves.  If I just lay here, holding my breath.  Watching echoes of what love might lose to love again.  Maybe I can be clean now, my beautiful lavender star.  I can't believe you didn't leave me, lost in endless shadow.  But you didn’t.  Somehow you found my heart.  In the dark of my most vulnerable moment.  Part of me wishes I could give you spoken words instead of secrets hidden in things unsaid.  But that's not our story.  I still believe you might need me, my dearest river-flower.  The romance of your endless here in my shaking heart.  I might be alone but I'm never without you.  I wear you on my sleeve, wonderful girl.  A testament to all the ways music can heal a broken boy.  You gave me something that I can't really give you in return – except in dreams.  Through you I found more peace than I ever thought possible, and for that you'll always have my heart.  Thank you, kind one, for the depth of your understanding.  These ghosts in the candle are lit by the flame of your love.  This light of my outline, these heavens above.  And so, I fold a kiss in a rosebud.  Like when we were young.  As I pray it crosses realms to reach you.