The Night In Its Glory

Departing

The song ends as so many sad things do –

sputtering to a stop as it drags 

its last notes across the finish line.

Deep inside the walls, this house remembers

How our early tiptoe of maybes and why nots

erupted in a dance of slow knives

until the stars first shivered in rapture

and the winds whirled with delight

and the waves crashed with reckless abandon

and the earth gave a warning tremble

and our hearts began to howl from the force

of collisions too violent to heal.

Now the memories stain the floor

and the house lends its silence to me.

You sleep with the curtains half-drawn

the moonlight cracking your face

like it knows all that I know

snaking a pale hold on your throat

and the narrow spaces of your dreams

as I walk out, out, out the door

and the night unfurls its secrets to me.