Heaven and You

The pain I feel rewards me for the time I spend alone,
the tenderness I’d missed became a noose to hang my head.
I sent my only treasures to your grave for you to own,
one day I know I’ll see again your face though you are dead.

My flowers in your lifeless hands, my teardrops in your hair,
I’d give my all, my life, my soul, to kiss you one more time.
It hardly seems it’s possible, I know it isn’t fair,
that all I have are memories, just images and rhyme.

The night I lost you came to be the night I threw my life
into this darkened vision out of which I cannot see,
which one of us was husband, and which one of us the wife?
Disconsolate, I’m guessing that now both of them are me.

I saw you sometimes, faintly though, as if you were still there,
my mind, it played these tricks on me; it wished you were still here.

Those days ago turned into weeks, then months turned into years,
and all this time alone, I’ve felt your presence holding on.
You are the part of me that helps eliminate my fears,
the part I grew to know, to love, and to depend upon.

But now your part is fading, memories begin to haze,
and time itself presents me with no enemy to fight.
I swore to you our love would last until the end of days,
but days’ end comes too slowly for to hold you in mind’s sight.

Ages come, ages pass, and ages ebb and flow in tide,
and still I hold your memory in hope that I will know
a quiet death, a simple death, in which I can confide
my love for you, one final time, before I, willing, go.

I see you sometimes, faintly though, your memory pushing though.
The boatman wants to take it though, he must collect his due.

Will I arrive at Heaven’s door, an end to ever-night,
to see your face, and not remember love, nor even name?
It hardly seems it’s possible, I know it isn’t right,
but that is what will happen, says the boatman, all the same.

With life comes love eternal, for eternity is short,
our lives, the blinking of a candle in the dead of night.
Love shines the brighter candle, over which our wars are fought,
but candles cannot shine inside of heaven’s blinding light.

I won’t remember you, it seems, for they will not abide
the candle’s light brought from our past to enter Heaven’s gate.
Though we will always once have been a groom and blushing bride,
it seems to me that Heaven’s gift is hateful, crushing fate.

I see you sometimes faintly, though the memory’s no more,
I ask myself, it shames to say, what did I miss you for?

I see you sometimes faintly, sometimes wonder who you are;
you seem familiar, though I only see you from afar.

I see you sometimes faintly, outline lost among the throng,
I don’t know you, don’t know myself, and nothing’s ever wrong.