Loving and Gently Fading Away

This is a poetry collection that mourns loss and parting in a quiet, careful voice.
From it, I learned the gentle heart that endures the absence of love,
and the tender way of pressing sorrow lightly so it does not crush the soul.
I am grateful.

You said poetry was too difficult, impossible to understand.
I asked if you tried to understand flowers the same way.
Still, I opened a book of poems and explained for a long while,
because I wanted to take the flush of your cheeks as a sign of love.

At last I’ve come to know that happiness is to bloom and to wither,
yet I will not say what it was that blossomed and faded between us—
for we cannot return together to gather what we once let fall.

Even now, I do not know love.
Nor am I kind.

— Words of the Poet”