As I embrace you, the
Slow Light of Fades

Spills a Jasmine silk of air,
Embraces night into wisps of

Knowing that I must leave you now
Here in the amphitheater of this time

This catacomb of our restlessness,
Astronomy of our hearts a map

To collisions of us the way stars
Belie the shadow of exile

Of illumination, a library
Of topology our loving cannot follow

This shortness of time becomes
Brackish as water beneath us, my gaze

A window to the candles’ whisper, their
Shadows dancing like leaves

In the flutter of night the way
My sorrow casts its imprint of your face

Upon me – the same light of softness for
Which I cannot be without

And yet your kiss shapes all of me
Together as we rise and dress

The night foregoing our hearts torment
Captive to the daybreak of dawn.

© K. James Ribble