Fragments of Cassandra

There are journeys
the body
was never meant
to survive.

Still;
I would have gone.

Not because I was lost.
But because some souls
are worth arriving to
with bleeding feet.

You have never been
the missing half of me.

You are the hymn
that reminds my soul
it was always capable
of singing.

There is a difference.

One speaks of absence.

The other;
of awakening.

So if Heaven itself
had hidden you

behind deserts
that swallowed names,

behind oceans
that baptized every traveler

into loneliness,
behind mountains
that demanded

I leave pieces of myself
upon their cliffs-

I would have called them
small inconveniences.

Love,
to me,
has never been measured
by how gently
it asks us to walk.

Only
by whether
we continue.

I have watched you
follow echoes.

Hands
that opened
only to close again.

Eyes
that searched elsewhere
while you stood
offering them

your entire sky.

I do not envy
the one
you keep chasing.

I mourn
the fact
that someone taught you
that love
should feel
uncertain.

Because if someone
can look at you-
truly look-
and still wonder…

they have mistaken
a sunrise
for ordinary light.

Wouldn’t you rather
be chosen
by someone
whose heart
has already arrived?

Someone
who has never rehearsed
their goodbye.

Someone
whose first instinct
is not departure-
but devotion.

I have never asked you
to become smaller
to fit inside
my understanding.

Never asked you
to explain yourself
twice.

Never questioned
whether your heart
meant
what it said.

I have only listened
until your silence
felt understood.

Perhaps
that is the cruelest thing.

Not that you cannot see me.

But that you have mistaken
history
for home.

You have confused
time
with belonging.

As though every year
spent loving someone
becomes a covenant.

As though endurance
and devotion
were born
of the same breath.

They are not.

Time
can build familiarity.

It can build longing.
It can even build grief.

But it has never built
love.

Love is built
every morning
someone wakes
and chooses
to stay.

Time tells us
how long
someone remained.

Love tells us
who remained
by choice.

You once told me
you feared
you were sprinting

through life,

while everyone else
walked somewhere
behind you,

while you were 
trying to become
the person
you had already outgrown.

But I was never
behind you.

Love has never asked me
to chase.

While you were running,
I was walking.

Not after you-

toward you.

Through my own wilderness.
My own deserts.

The valleys
that taught me
how to keep faith
when no one
was watching.

I trusted
that somewhere ahead
there would be
a crossroads

neither of us
could have found
by searching.

And when your running
finally became walking,

I hoped
you would look up
and see me.

Not waiting for you.
Meeting you.

Ready to walk beside you
for whatever road
still remained.

Perhaps
that is the tragedy.

Not that you ran.

But that you believed
love
was something
waiting behind you,
trying
to catch up.

When all along,
it was quietly
walking toward you,

ready to meet you
where your becoming
and mine
finally shared
the same horizon.

If you never choose me-

I will live.
I know how.

The sun
will still find
my windows.

The earth
will still remember
my name.

Joy
will visit me

again.

But somewhere,
years from now,

when another goodbye
arrives
wearing
a familiar face-

I wonder
if your heart
will remember

there was once
someone
who had already decided

that every war,
every wilderness,
every lifetime,
was worth crossing-

just to be certain
you never had to cross
the next one
alone.



Be’ahava,
The Mourning Bird