Pauses between seconds

Can you hear the wheels of time

Turning slow on forgotten roads,

Where footprints of us dissolve like mist—

softened by memory’s incessant rain 

Those wheels turn and a day becomes years,

And autumn leaves consume spring’s flowers.

Those wheels slowed down when your lips

Touched mine; other days, they sped along.

But you—

You are stitched into the pause between seconds,

A breath held by the sky herself 

Even now, in the hush between heartbeats,

You arrive in the echo of everything I never forgot.

Mita, you, who never should have left

Your breath’s precious garlands on my 

wintered soul.

Tell me how I may I get to walk again

On this grass, this ground, under that moon

Where you and I were once, just one?

And if ever we meet again—

Not in this life of numbered days,

But in the hush between stars,

Let us not speak of loss or leaving.

Just sit. Just smile. Just breathe.

No kiss is good, just you and I