Bloodlines

Where are you now, if not woven into the fabric of my memory?
You are no longer here, yet your wisdom pulses through my veins like an ancient song.

If I close my eyes, your laughter
A soft echo, still reverberates in the spaces between my thoughts...
And your footsteps, the whisper of a presence that once was
Yet the cruel truth lingers: you have gone.

Gone to a place that is not a place...
but a world so delicate, so ethereal..
Where pain no longer holds dominion.

I carry within me the beauty and fury of a storm..
Deadly, glowing, beautiful...
And the mystery of all that is ancient
Your bloodline, my gift...
Your death, the venomous nectar meant to unravel me...
Yet, like the rainbow after the storm, I rise...
Reborn...unbroken.

As I surrender my body to the ocean’s embrace...
I feel every nerve, every sense awaken...
the cold water, caressing the rawness of my skin.

I climb a floating log...
the earth’s quiet pulse beneath me...
and I look to the sky, where your memory dances...
our long talks and the warmth of your smile swirling around me like soft light.

I do not know if absence is a sweet oblivion
or the bitter ache of my heart
straining to name what has been lost
But in the end, absence remains our unspoken bridge...
connecting the world of the living to the world of memory.

To forget you would be a sin
a denial of the most tender truth
This is not goodbye...
this is a tender, aching farewell...
Until we meet again in the next life.
~Sofia E. Falcone~