Without Your Presence

-

 


Without your presence,

I am as the moon bereft of night,

a silver pilgrim wandering beneath a heaven

that has forgotten how to cradle the stars.

***

Tell me-

is this love, so profound that it has become fear,

or have I made your nearness

the very breath upon which my soul depends?

***

As your lover,

I find in you the spring within my winter,

the harbour where my restless heart

lays down its weary tides.

When you are near,

even the leaves seem gentler,

and the wind carries a tenderness

it does not bestow upon the lonely.

***

Yet when you depart,

my heart becomes a forest at twilight-

every rustling branch a question,

every wandering breeze a foreboding.

I fear the silence after your voice,

the emptiness beside me,

the long and solemn hours

in which your absence becomes almost tangible.

***

As your mother,

I love you with an ancient tenderness-

the tenderness of earth toward the seed,

of rain toward the parched meadow,

of the dawn that watches faithfully

over a sleeping world.

***

I have carried your sorrows

as the ocean carries the weight of rivers,

without complaint, without measure.

I have watched you grow

like a young tree beneath a patient sun,

and somewhere along the years,

my heart began to believe

that protecting you

was the very purpose of its beating.

***

So when you are gone,

why does the world seem suddenly less certain?

***

And as your sister,

I carry another kind of love-

one woven from childhood laughter,

old wounds, secret glances,

shared memories,

and the thousand unspoken things

that only blood and time can understand.

***

You are a chapter of my childhood

that no other soul can rewrite.

A familiar star in the constellation of my life,

a voice that belongs to the house of my memories.

***

I may quarrel with you,

wander from you,

pretend that I need no one-

yet beneath all that proud silence

there remains a little girl

who still believes that somewhere

her brother is watching over the horizon.

***

And perhaps this is why

your absence unsettles me so deeply.

***

I have loved you

in three sacred languages-

as a woman loves her beloved,

as a mother cherishes her child,

and as a sister guards

the memories of her first home.

***

But sometimes I wonder:

Is it love,

or have I mistaken dependence for devotion?

***

Perhaps I have made your presence

the sun around which my heart revolves,

forgetting that even flowers

must learn to face the light

without clinging to the sun.

***

I do not wish to possess you.

I do not wish my love

to become a chain around your freedom.

***

I only wish to learn

the gentler wisdom of love-

to hold you close

without fearing your distance,

to cherish you

without making you responsible

for the peace within my soul.

***

For love should be like the river:

deep enough to remember the mountains,

yet wise enough to keep flowing.

And perhaps, one day,

I shall stand beneath the ancient trees of myself,

rooted, serene, and unafraid,

and finally understand-

I may love you as my lover,

cherish you as my child,

and treasure you as my brother,

without losing the woman I am.

***

For true love is not the trembling heart

that cannot survive another's absence;

it is the quiet garden within the soul

that continues to bloom

even when the beloved walks beyond its gates.


******with love..

 your One and Only Fourlinegraphia*******

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