I will cry forever until.... ~ poem for the Dragon

The long days stretch out before me,

Each world-weary hour is spent alone

Worry and fear, sorrow and longing

Have pulled up chairs at my table,

And linked hands in silent prayer.

Each step I take, each task I perform

Each shuddering breath that comes, each stitch I sew

Are involuntary and done so that I

Continue to endure this life that’s left,

This empty existence that mocks my previous one.

But I continue to get bogged down, slowed,

Forced to my knees in endless pain

Mourning for, grieving for, crying out to

The Dragon who unwillingly died,

For my love who lost his struggle to take another breath.

I live a half-life with a blank public expression

And a sorrowful private one, tears, always tears,

That never stop even when my face is dry.

My cries for my Dragon are loud in my anguished mind

And echo in my shattered heart.

Empty arms drop to my sides from the burden of grief,

From the awareness that there is no Dragon to embrace.

No scaly, scarred dragon with a voice of fire

moves close to my body, next to me, encircles me,

No kindred soul can I feel or sense. I am alone.

No more meeting of true minds and truer hearts

No more tangible love though our love did not die,

Nor ended with the death of the Dragon.

Our love was outside us as well as within

And it endures and has been transformed.

I will never be the same, see the same, or feel the same.

All that I loved, all that I held dear, lived inside of you.

All that is left is a woman who has withdrawn to shadows

Enacting a life that she has scraped together to last.

All that is inside her are the tears she will cry forever, until

Until the woman in shadows and the Dragon are reunited.

Then the stars in the night will twinkle brighter.

The moon will be full as it was the night he died

But this time, it will shine on the couple who loved through time

And found each other again past sorrow, through tears, and beyond death.