Fragments of Cassandra

Your voice never needed to be loud.  
It found me anyway; 
settling somewhere beneath my ribs,  
where reason goes quiet.

"Look at me or I'll stop."

The words were hardly more than a whisper,  
yet my heart obeyed before I could.  

A gentle hand beneath my chin,  
lifting my eyes to meet yours.

"That's it."

My thoughts dissolved  
into the spaces  
between your words,  
and my soul
answered every sentence  
before I ever could.

"You've been so good."

Strange,  
how a handful of syllables  
could awaken a storm within my chest,  
until my heart beat so violently  
I feared it might tear through bone  
just to answer you.

You looked at me  
the way people  
look at great works of art;  

not searching  
for what could be improved,  
but wondering  
how something so beautiful  
had ever come to exist.

as though someone  
had gathered every beautiful thing  
the world had ever known,  
and somehow  
they had all  
found a home in me.


Be'ahava,
The Mourning Bird