By Courtney Staib
September 22, 1990:
The autumnal equinox:
our wedding day.
It was the most magnificent, picturesque day of the year,
with trees donning their pulsating crisp golds and scarlet reds,
and the autumn chill closing in as she
glided down the aisle with her flower crown.
Days became shorter and that autumn beauty soon
began to dwindle.
January 14, 1986:
And all at once,
I understood
how unbelievably attracted I was to her.
There was no greater
revelation.
The stillness of the Earth
mixed with the entrenching
echoes
of her voice,
calling out my name.
With her delicate expressions and
resilient personality,
her unscathed being absorbed my entire
soul.
She was a moon,
millions of light years away that I,
so inconsequential,
could not fathom how she
traveled the boundless blackness
to discover
me.
October 6, 2015:
But the end was coming soon.
Our hospital visits became daily events.
Novas lit her body, and were spreading
to every corner of her divine being.
October 8, 2015:
The bleak, white walls held a dense atmosphere
containing residual energies from other ill patients.
Hospitals are the limbo where the ill prepare for
their return to the stars;
the prolonging of the inevitable.
But whose decision is it,
to decide then they depart?
November 19, 2015:
A thin ray of brisk
sunlight peaks through
the blanketed, grey clouds.
The trees stand bare and chilled,
naked and vulnerable.
They say all good things must come to an end,
but where is the end?
In spring, fresh-faced buds of familiar
foliage begin to sprout,
reminding us that
nothing is truly
gone
forever.
November 24, 2015:
As her consciousness began
to dwindle, and her heart beat
one last time,
tidal waves began to obscure my vison,
creating a world of blurred colors, fusing into
gray and black.
I was imprisoned
in a lake
filled with my own tears.
Trapped under ice.
Today:
I cannot swim to the surface.
With her,
I felt as though I was living in an
infinite summer,
for everyday with her was a perfectly blue,
cloudless sky; now, my blue sky has left
and the smoky, grey fog is too thick
to see through. When I am sleeping, I can feel her warmth next to me.
The indentation of her
memory inhabits the
sheets, yet when I wake
the blankets are cold
and the trees
are still
bare.