When Love Turns To Ash

We stood in the quiet where our names had burned away,

the air still trembling from the echo of what we were.

I sifted through the cinders of your touch,

finding nothing left but the shape of smoke.

Even the silence held your voice.

We forgot how to pray in the same language.

Your eyes, once thunder, became mirrors-

showing only what I feared.

Love turned ritual, repetition, ruin.

Our fire learned to whisper instead of roar.

You said my name like a closing door.

The gods who watched us flinched.

Between us-

a breath, a blade, a choice.

I reached for you, and the world exhaled dust.

We danced in the smoke and embers,

called it dawn,

I traced your scars and named them after constellations,

as if naming could make them stars again.

But even light lies,

given enough distance.

We laughed too loudly then,

as if joy could outshout prophecy.

The first cracks sang softly beneath our feet,

and we mistook them for music.

Your hand found mine.

Heat, wild and holy-

like the world beginning again just for us.

We promised forever with mortal mouths,

not knowing forever was already ending.

Before your name, before your touch-

there was only the light on your face,

and the ache of recognition.

I think the universe began there,

in that single, untainted heartbeat

before love learned to burn.