Make_____

The water underneath, dark and deep, secrets buried under rocks, hors du temps, current carving patterns in the face of the earth. It goes by, always.

We were walking over the bridge, and you held it in your hands.

You opened them up and it flew away. Like a helium balloon. Like a bird, I imagined. No longer tied to us, its flight unpredictable, and in a way free.

I tried to look up into your face, but the sun was too bright; tried to follow its flight path with my eyes, but instead saw the blinding blue, washing over me, swallowing me. Caught maybe a silhouette.

We were its keepers. Its liberty and its cage.

———

I searched everywhere but never found a trace, and one day, down a dark back alley somewhere, I turned—from peeking under boards and bricks and wood and lids and doors and pavement—to look beside me, and noticed you were gone.

———

There is a picture of your faced etched onto a wall somewhere. When I see it, I think maybe that is where you disappeared to. I still sing. To it, to you.

It could be that your hands weren’t sheltering, but concealing. An empty space, the ghost of our lost love.