a type of love

it’s raining leaves today and the wind speaks through them like something deep, like something approaching old, and so I’m told, too beautiful to keep. there’s something we whisper to ourselves at night, when eyes close and life collapses in on itself, when time collapses in on itself, turning cavernous and wide, and we wonder why the words we whisper disintegrate sometimes, and we lose our step sometimes, we think we fall way too short sometimes.

but the wind that makes the leaves rain is whispering something sweet, up from the twisted bottom of things, and we feel the gentle pull of times before these when rivers ran free and bodies could sing. a tracing of love to the root, to hearts dipped in red, changing always changing, but never losing when the past is far from dead and things we’ve laid to rest come back instead. and what does death mean anyway, and what is loss anyway, when time stretches deep not wide and all the ghosts know us by name.

hearts dipped in red, when they looked me in the eye and said they wouldn’t change a single thing about me. a single thing about me, and I couldn’t believe it and still can’t believe it, but it’s raining leaves today and some part of me believes it in the way that people can mean exactly what they say. and sometimes you don’t look away and you stay. and isn’t that a type of love, like something deep, like something approaching old, and so I’m told, too beautiful to keep.