I thought you cast me into the dreadful night of ruin,
and loving you, I trusted in your enchanted realm.
On your shore I poured out all of myself,
I set fire to my body, my mind, my soul.
But one day the suffocating truth stood before me, she is no longer mine.
Her love is now offered to another,
as if the river’s current has turned and flowed to some unfamiliar shore,
and I lie on the dry sand like the ash of a fire gone out.
She now performs her ritual bathing for him,
for him she opens the courtyard of her love.
And I remain only to gather the wreckage of her absence,
I cling to the memories as if to something whole and unfaded.
I know each touch will scorch me, yet I cannot let go,
for that flame of her love was my lamp.
Pain is certain, still I keep it alive, consciously, in the depth of my chest.
She is not mine,
and yet within this eternal truth I still find her shadow.
Forgetting any curse, I will honor her for life.
I know love dies, what does not die is the beloved’s mercy.