Love Then and Now

There is a high of young love with

the global shifts of red-hot magma

in between our hearts’ pressure chambers.

There is a wildfire of waterfalls

when our eyes meet.

It destroys our defenses

and melts away our barriers.

The robust bones,

quick senses of our youth in its ferocity and speed.

Then comes the ceaseless rhythm of the seasons’ changing,

turning over and over like a fresh bedsheet.

Time rushes past like a high-speed train

until our skin is translucent as our soul.

I stare into your eyes — they are still sky blue,

and I am still that girl with her arms outstretched,

jumping in piles of leaves in autumn,

catching snowflakes on my tongue in wintertime,

reading books for in-school summers — the endless learner,

while love morphed itself into

an endless scroll of patience and compassion

with fragile shaking hands and wrinkled skin.

Of course, I’d want to revisit to when

we first met and had hot chocolate with marshmallows

at that cafe in Barcelona,

or when we read poetry together

by candlelight on a hillside in Greece,

but there are no tickets available. That said,

I still want the sun to rise over your cheeks and set in mine,

to feel the soil between our fingers during harvest,

to see the stars reflected in your creased eyes.

I’m going to keep falling further and deeper for you

until there is no more falling or rising, or even moving,

until the birds become too heavy to fly

and our fingerprints are gone,

until I forget how to think or breathe or forget who I am,

until my last flicker is extinguished.

. . .

© Irina Patterson, February 18, 2022

Also published on Medium

Thank you for reading, my other stories are here.

Love, Irina.