“The Way We Were”
The years, silk-threaded, unravel in silence,
captured in the mirror’s quiet glow,
faces etched with time’s shifting hand.
Wouldn’t the stars weep for their forgetting,
the way their light rests on water,
an echo of brilliance already spent,
like the shadows we left behind?
Each memory, a bird aloft in dusk,
beating against twilight’s tender shell,
its feathers dipped in amber and rain.
The air, thick with words unspoken,
carves the shape of you in absence–
a touch that trembles, then dissolves,
like frost beneath a hesitant morning.
Who were we before the years bent low,
its breath churning petals to dust,
its footsteps trailing fire through us?
Did our laughter not bloom like lilacs,
clouding the sky with lavender fragrance?
The oceans held their breath for us,
and the moon cupped rivers in its palm.
Your smile, a trembling constellation,
softly carved into the ether’s skin,
burrowed itself within my aching chest.
Could hands rewrite the script of time,
shifting the chapters of scarring winds,
back to the meadow’s unbroken green,
where innocence tangled in wild brambles?
Our laughter once scattered like seeds,
rooting itself in the marrow of earth,
and every stem drank deep of our joy.
Did the valleys memorize us as flame,
untamed streaks curling within their folds,
clasping the map of where we danced
before shadows etched barbs in the dirt?
Time– its cruel artifice of continuity,
the endless ladder without a summit– offers no mercy to tender beginnings.
It painted streaks of gray in longing,
bled colors from our once-vivid dawn,
and left us clinging to ghosts of days
that ran through our fingers like rivers.
Oh, my love, the way we were–
was it a song written by morning,
its chords tangled with celestial strings
and its verses stolen by the horizon?
Or did it linger, sweet as warm honey,
dripping from skies pregnant with rain,
shadowed only by curious clouds?
Our hands once shaped nations in our touch,
palms grazing hills made holy in love.
The bread we broke whispered our names,
with each crumb a remembrance of us–
the bloom and wither of wild violets,
pressed between the pages of fleeting time.
Now only their ghosts murmur in the wind.
What have we left to grasp but sky,
its ceaseless depths mirroring our ache,
our once-bright flame cradled by ash?
Even the stars wane in their orbits,
burnt-out silence dressed in frail light,
but they whisper of us through the void,
in echoes spun from infinite distances.
Were the meadows, then, not witnesses?
Were the earth’s arms not outstretched,
collecting footsteps stitched with joy?
Our shadows gilded the fields with gold,
the clovers beckoning in playful sway,
but seasons turned, unbinding the threads,
the tapestry unraveled without remorse.
In your eyes, I saw ancient oceans,
worlds beyond this bruised horizon’s reach.
Now I trace their absence relentlessly,
fingers gliding over invisible waves,
sinking into dreams too deep to grasp.
What wreckage is this? What remains
of us but yearning’s patient embers?
I hear your voice within the distance,
soft as silver pouring from the tide.
It alights between shattered afternoons,
calling forth the scent of oranges,
fresh-cut grass, and tremors of sun,
but the scent fades as shadows lengthen,
slipping beneath the edge of memory.
Every glance backward cleaves like knives,
tearing the threads of what we cherished.
Yet even pain carries a delicate beauty,
like the bruises of roses torn by storms,
their fallen petals thick with fragrance,
reminding us of veins once alight,
when blood and love wove into eternity.
Perhaps yesterdays are paper boats,
floating fragile atop time’s vast rivers,
sodden and crumbling, yet they persist.
Even the winds carry fragments of us,
wrapping the world in forgotten songs;
and though they shatter against tides,
their harmony hums beyond all decay.
Oh, how the sun trembled for us,
threading warmth through tender roots,
filling valleys with gold-dripped sighs!
Oh, how rain wept upon our shoulders,
and the earth bore our weight like prayer,
scrawling our steps onto its pages,
hoping for permanence within its loam.
But permanence now mocks us silently,
etched in absence more vast than time.
Our love became a cathedral of ruins,
its spires reaching for an absent sky,
whispering praises to what has faded,
while its cradle remains carved in stone–
a shadow of beauty turned inward, still.
Did the rivers we loved keep their course?
Do they still sing our name in echoes,
or have they, too, forgotten time’s voice?
The trees where we scrawled sacred vows
are now split branches, wind-strewn tales,
their trunks folding inward like bones,
their leaves spiraling into mute horizons.
Yet the echoes of how we were remain,
woven between the threads of twilight,
where stars ache without speaking aloud.
And though the seasons tear apart,
breaking what blooms savagely, tenderly,
in every shard we find some redolence,
some pulse of life that cleaves the void.
So here we stand, amidst the fragments,
piecing constellations from broken wings.
The past is not a shrine, but a seed,
covering itself deep in the fertile dark.
Perhaps the way we were was the garden,
bright once, still buried in sacred soil,
waiting, patient, for spring’s tender bloom.
Part II
The Way We Were
How soft the spine of memory bends,
carrying the weight of what once was.
The sky, a cathedral of shattered stars,
sings with echoes of our whispered names.
Do you remember the river’s gentle arms,
how it cradled reflections we once believed?
Its waters held the fleeting fire of us.
In the shadowed hollows of bending trees,
there were secrets that passed between hands,
fingers laced like tangled roots of time.
The wind embroidered tales into our skin,
threads of laughter, of fleeting embraces.
We were the architects of eternal moments,
drawing constellations on unmarked maps.
There was rain that fell like untamed silver,
coating our shoulders with untold tomorrows.
The thunder did not terrify us, no–
it sharpened the edge of our being alive.
We danced there, between storm and silence,
choosing chaos over the dull march of calm,
choosing to live where the wild heart calls.
And oh, the mornings laced in trembling gold,
when the earth sighed beneath our bare feet,
its breath carpeting the fields with desire.
Even the sky leaned closer to witness us,
cracked open its veins of light to touch us.
How the air around you seemed to shiver,
refusing to settle on anything but skin.
Do you hear it now, that lingering voice?
It is the cadence of a million sunsets,
their light folding into unvisited corners,
piercing the cavern of our forsaken mind.
We were both the flame and the crimson ash,
walking a line between fury and forgiveness,
two mirrors facing a vanishing horizon.
Even now, the ocean deepens with sorrow,
its waves a chorus of our silent hymns.
Still, I see the sunlight tattooed on you,
patterns no erosion could ever erase,
like immortal ink etched by summer’s hand.
Your laughter, the wind’s conspiracy with joy,
finds an altar in my ever-broken chest.
Confession: I do not seek to escape you.
Why should I, when you are every shadow?
You sit in the breath between closing doors,
in the faint murmur of ancient oak trees.
Every street corner wears our conversations;
the earth itself carries our footprints still.
How can anything truly leave when owned?
Snow softened not just the earth, but voices,
folding us inside a cocoon of stillness.
And yet, each snowflake tastes of longing,
a crystal tear born from unseen clouds.
Even in the frost, your warmth lingers,
a stubborn ghost refusing surrender,
keeping the red pulp of me alive, alive.
Mountains carved their silhouettes for us,
as though knowing we’d endure in inked paths.
They rise now, monuments of untarnished recall,
impassive witnesses to our feral truths.
We were children to the earth’s fierce song,
and yet, also its scribes, its restless poets,
writing rebellion against the erosion of time.
Does the moon still bow to you tonight?
Does it spread its silver veil over thoughts,
decorating you with its borrowed jewels?
I sometimes wonder who you’ve become,
whether the sky has rewritten your story,
whether I remain a verse in its soft pages,
or only a fragment that rains and retreats.
What beauty is greater than our breaking?
Even shrapnel glimmers in the hands of light.
We will never be anything but unfinished,
for history folds us even now, bit by bit.
Our voices echo like brass in empty halls,
each note devoured by a sacred silence,
where the heart beats to outlast its own echo.
Perhaps we are but fragments of a dream,
stray pieces cast adrift in time’s parade.
What was ever complete, polished, whole?
The cracks, my love, are where light gathers.
Even ruin is a form of rebirth waiting,
an altar waiting to bless the tired pilgrim
with mercy, with a map back to tenderness.
The past is not something that you outrun;
it’s carried like marrow within hollow bones.
Each glance backward becomes resurrection,
the reclamation of lifetimes lost midstream.
In the fragile weight of what has been,
doesn’t the enormity of living seem brighter?
We light again on embers thought extinguished.
Sing, oh tenderest ache, sing of yesterdays.
Still, your breath lingers beneath my ribs,
moving through the chambers where I sleep.
What I lost was not the shape of you–
it was the compass you became for me,
the directionless wanderings of a weary soul,
resting in your shadow’s tender architecture.
No goodbye ever truly finishes its work,
its syllables fray, leaving threads of return.
You wear the seasons in your steady gaze.
I’ll remember, yes– I’ll carry these whispers,
fragments left unfinished by dawning light.
That’s how we preserve what cannot remain,
letting each scar glow like a burning star.
Lifted by winds we could never tame,
we stood freighted with too much beauty.
It’s not regret, this echo I carry now–
it’s a thank you sung in endless silence.
The relics of a forgotten dawn are ours,
the relics and the roads we carved deep,
forever held within the trembling earth.
By
Na Yama
