Sahara/Oasis w/Adelphina

Will you remember me
beneath all this sand
Will you recall a time
when my love was lush                             

                         I have not forgotten you,
                         not beneath this heat,
                         not beneath the years
                         Your name is the only shade
                         I still stand in

Where there were no
mirages just mirrors
that reflected our
love for one other

                       Where you see only dunes,
                       I see the riverbed we carved,
                       the one that waits
                       for the sky to remember
                       how to open

Bountiful and
in abundance
before the earth shifted
taking me with it
far too soon
before I was ready
buried alive by drought
and your footprints

                         You were never lost to me
                         I felt you sink,
                         felt the hush of your leaving,
                         felt the sand close
                         like a held breath

I feel you searching the
dunes in each arid step
unaware of my slumber
beneath your feet

                         I walk the same desert,
                         my steps a quiet vow,
                         my thirst a kind of prayer
                         that still speaks your shape
                         into the wind

And when you finally
fall to your knees
as we tend to do
when love is lost
remember, one must dig
tenaciously
unapologetically
as if searching for treasure

                         And if I kneel someday,
                         as wanderers do
                         when memory overtakes them,
                         I will dig with the certainty
                         of a man returning home

Until your hands bleed
and I promise you
will find me in water
cleansing your hands
assuring you everything
will be fine
you will always
be mine

                          My hands will bleed too,
                          but only because
                          I am breaking the crust
                          between us
                          not because you are gone
                          For when I reach you,
                          I know you will rise
                          like water from stone,
                          cooling the years
                          from my palms

But for now
in the Sahara
you must continue
to walk without me.

                            And I will tell you then
                            what I whisper now:
                            you were never the desert
                            You were the oasis
                            I kept walking toward.

~~~