9.

The winter of our breath was the blue

Of the sky, the sound of our feet

On the crust was a crisp horizon,

The taste of your tears was salt, the sea

Extending like your arms to the hill. Time

Has come between us: there are not enough

Lives to live. Blood and marrow age

Almost unnoticed until dusk is falling

Bombs splintering home, child, street. What love

Grows amid the rubble, how do we return

To the silence by the shore, sublimate

The noise that distracts us from what matters?

This life sentence demands the mending

Of exile, healing the scar, the winding.