Always is a Difficult Season – An English Love Poem

Tonight the moon hangs like a forgotten promise,
above the silent roofs of our separate cities.

The wind moves between us,
as if it remembers the shape of your shoulders
better than I do.

We were not small, you and I.
We were tidal, I guess.

When you touched my hand
the earth shifted its weight toward summer,
and the hours melted like wax
at the altar of your breathing.

Your name was not a word
it was a country of warm rain,
a field of trembling wheat at dusk.
I entered it barefoot,
and every step burned with joy.

Do you remember?
The night carried our laughter
like a lantern through dark water.
Your hair spilled over my chest
like midnight pouring its ink
into a willing sky.

We were reckless with eternity.
We said always
as though it were a fruit we could split open
and eat without consequence.

But always is a difficult season.

The trains began to speak in iron tongues.
Letters thinned into silence.
The world, with its careful hands,
closed its fist around us
and called it destiny.

I searched for you in crowds,
in the curve of a stranger’s smile,
in the echo of footsteps behind me.
Every doorway was an almost.
Every morning, a refusal.

You stood on the other side of reasons
we did not create
but could not undo.

Duty. Distance.
The slow corrosion of time.
And yet, love did not leave.

It stayed
like salt in the blood,
like a star invisible at noon
but burning faithfully beyond sight.

I know somewhere you wake before dawn
with my shadow resting against your ribs.
I know you turn your face to the window
and feel the sea inside you
rise without a shore.

We are separated
as two trees divided by a road
roots tangled deep beneath the pavement,
branches reaching into different skies.

Our story cannot happen.
The door has chosen its frame.
The map has fixed its borders.

But if the wind listens closely tonight,
it will hear us
two distant flames
leaning toward one another
across an impossible dark,

still burning,
still knowing,
that once
we were the whole horizon.