Poem

The Gate

/ /

How often did I beg the world for signs? Fog purls above the river. Years have passed like shadows. Everything that’s happened since

floods seamlessly together. Cold so dense, it’s hard to breathe. You left me—I collapsed. Why did I need to beg the world for signs?

Our final photograph—your shoulders tense— no laughter there, no gesture of love. Our past, flat as a shadow. What has happened since?

Time drifted like snow, absolving all your sins and most of mine. I’ve saved the worst for last. How when I begged the silent world for signs,

instead, it showed me how all grief begins its slow diminishing—love’s monuments lost in the marbled fog like shadows. Ever since,

this loss was the land I lived on and its fence. But now, the gate swings open. Fog so vast, it’s blinding—no more shadows, no more since. I begged. The world has given me these signs.