Things We Lost in the Fire

The morning after
The smell of fate
Hanging heavy over me
The wisps are all that remain
And through the smoke
I see
The ephemeral space between
Reality as we like to see it
And reality as it looks
Sometimes, just sometimes...

In the dead calm
Lit up by the sunrise
That you and me never
Thought would ever come
We stand there, hand in hand
And find, and stumble on to,
And count, and try to wash
With our tears, with our kisses
The things we lost in the fire

I think there, in the corner
Is a thought you once gave me
One that I played with for a week
And then it must have fallen
Behind the table on which
I keep all my frivolities
Last night, I found it again
After the walls fell

Over there, next to where the bed was
Is the sound of the laughs you
Gifted to me on my birthday
The ones that I accepted without
Even knowing who it was
Who was making those minutes
Pinpricks on my memory, on the day
There came a fire, I never did know

On my desk, you had left
The stories of books you never read
And scraps of mischief that you threw
At me, those that I laughed at the futility of
I couldn't have been more wrong
We shall see, I had said
And I am seeing, but not what I was
Expecting to see. Looking in at you
Through this glass cage, that somehow
Survived the fire

And in that cage is something I may never lose
Try as hard as I might, maybe never, ever
I don't think I ever noticed it before
But it was always there, holding the essence
Of you, of me and of every one of us
Sitting amidst the embers, tarnished but unhurt
Something that the fire couldn't touch
The losses, we shall count in the days
Oh the days that shall stretch out for long
Defying the pulls of time

But there's one thing that
We didn't lose in the fire.
And I will keep it close to me
But don't you worry, dear friend
If I hesitate to come near it today
I'll be back tomorrow...
To take home with me,
The priceless nugget
I found after the fire.

Dedicated, with love and a profound sense of insignificance and humility, to you. Shine on, forever.