…the depths are a return

True love never ends, it drifts slowly into the depths
and our hearts follow
the depths are not earth, not as we know it
they are a vast interior where sorrow gathers
like a storm with no horizon
and here, dreams burn quietly, toward a darkness, older than time
here in this desolate place I walk the corridors of memory
listening to the echoes, where somewhere below
our flames are still smouldering, beneath the rubble of us
in these depths lies the truth that I could never face
a place where fire and water meet in an impossible truce
and here is where I find you, your voice rising from the abyss
in slow spirals of flames
the depths keep a ledger of everything
what we have lost, what we might have become
if fate had not intervened
I see the funeral pyre of us, embers still smouldering
glowing in the blue-black dark
I feel the ancient pull of my heart’s abyss
something darker than desire and deeper than forgiveness
for here, love is stripped of illusion, here, only the truth survives
down here, it is just you and me
and the endless depths that devour all distance
and in this absolute darkness, where all illusions dissolve
I finally understand that the depths, are a return
and you, my beloved, have always been waiting here
for me to find you
© Ann Bagnall