When You Came In

When You Came In

Cirrus on duty, nimbus drifting wide—
when you came in,
you deftly unmade me,
pointed a finger
through the hole in the sky.
She was there.
She said:
“Place these pieces. They don’t belong,
not here, not now, not yet.”
Her words sharpened air,
a challenge that hummed,
waiting for my move.

This girl and her litanies—
truth as water,
slipping past the hand.
I knew too well to try.

There’s a factory somewhere
grinding egos into dust.
There’s a suited gatekeeper
snipping wings with scissors too dull for the job.

Meet me tomorrow
beneath the next sky up,
where lamplight spills thin as thread
and love,
stripped of its pretty armour,
dangles over the abyss.
Words don’t belong there,
not until they’ve bled ink.
That’s the lesson she taught me.

The fearsome truths you gave me
live for a single breath,
then every breath says goodbye.

I gave yesterday to the fire
for the ashes of today.
Now I understand:
the artist’s pen,
the poet’s brush—
drumming time into the skin-

this tattoo
of all we couldn’t fix.

Maybe this silence
is the last illusion.
Maybe the curtain fell long ago,
and I missed it.
But still,
we took our bow.