…finally meeting

We were never the same, you and I
although perhaps that was the beauty of us
you were the restless ocean, forever searching for another shore
while I was the moon, quietly pulling at your tides
you were the summer rain, falling unexpectedly
through the open windows of my life
and I was the cold winds of autumn
gathering your discarded moments, like leaves
and pressing them carefully, between the pages of memory
our two hearts, slowly learning
the strange mathematics of belonging
we were like two rivers finally meeting, after forever travelling alone
through mountains and valleys, carrying different stones
different reflections and different stories of the rain
until suddenly, there was no clear place
where one ended and the other began
perhaps love is like that, not surrender, but confluence
your hand inside mine, without either of us losing ourselves
we were like two trees, growing in the same wild forest
our branches sometimes touching
our roots meeting secretly beneath the earth
whispering through darkness, ‘I am here, I am still here’
and through every season we remained
through the winters that stripped us bare
through the storms that bent our branches, almost to breaking
through summers, when the earth cracked with thirst beneath us
and still, somewhere deep below
our roots remembered the shape of each other
that was our love, not something measurable
not something that could be divided, into equal portions
and placed carefully upon a scale
it was simply the invisible space between us
the place where your laughter met mine
where your sorrow became something that I could hold
where my silence was understood, without explanation
and sometimes at night, beneath the sky
scattered with an impossible numbers of stars
I wondered how we found one another on this small spinning planet
that your eyes found mine and your hand reached out
that for one brief fragment of eternity
the universe allowed us to become one
and if one day, time separates us again
if the seasons finally carry our footprints away
perhaps somewhere beneath the earth
those tangled roots will remain, still touching
still remembering, still whispering softly through the darkness
‘we were here, we were one’
©Ann Bagnall