In light is found darkness in darkness, light.
The irony does not escape
me.
In me he finds companionship,
strength, hope
I,
who had given up
on the world, on life
before he found me;
who has no strength
save what I borrow from him;
who gives him companionship
because not to do so is to cut
out half of my heart.
I lend him my light –
fractured
spinning and refracting as from the shattered splinters of
a stained-glass window, or
a flawed mirror.
He takes it,
shapes it
(as he shapes me)
blending it with shadow and the edge
of madness,
softening its fear and longing with loneliness and despair.
Our pain is one thing we share freely.
Seeking beauty,
I bring him only fear and loss.
I hand my faith to him,
who cannot trust even himself,
withdrawing with a snarl to
lick wounds
gone dry and dark with age.
I welcome each cut of his tongue,
to remind me that my flesh still bleeds –
his pain hurts me more than my own.
Often I wonder
who is this girl reflected in his golden eyes..?
Perhaps I do not exist
outside of his imagination.
I strive to remember my existence before him –
the girl I was
lost,
drifting in darkness.
Unable to find myself,
I remake this girl
to the image in his mind,
finer,
more detailed,
made perfect by his touch
and the hollow emptiness of our suffering.
From him I take my light,
he who lives in shadows, burning
as a banked ember,
too stubborn to flame higher – unwilling or unable to expire.
He whose soul is dead breathes life to my cold lips,
and takes heat
from the touch of this little hand,
reaching to comfort and caress
beyond the walls of ice and steel and flame
to touch a heart
(still beating, still beating)
masked even more closely
than his face.
AMH – 28 March 2005
