Ambering

The afternoon light bled honey,

and you walked backward into it,

your hands

clasped behind your back,

spilling a silhouette poised for swallowing.

I saw the sun lit your hair from within,

each strand a filament about to snap

against the sky’s burning orange.

You let the wood take you,

by a thicket of endless, reaching black,

your slight form, your skirt, a pale flag,

your eyes smiling a brief bloom,

narrowing to slivers of the moon.

You never looked away.

In your pupils, my own face floated,

small and frantic, on the still pond

of your gaze, a well too deep for echoes.

Then you turned your body,

your glance withdrew its light.

I reached for the hem of your skirt,

for the shattered sun of your smile,

but my fingers closed around dampness —

We had been nothing

but two moths that circled different lights,

each of us alone in the vast, indifferent dark.

You left,

your path from me clear and bright,

Yet I am still here,

clutching the hollow, aching shape of a ghost,

trapped in the amber of that sun-drenched afternoon.