March 11, 2024 by Jenn Zatopek

This Love Between Us

This love between us bloomed like a desert rose,
gorgeous in the honeyed light of autumn,

but dies now in the cold darkness of winter.
I can feel the shutting down,

your heart unwilling to open
to what you’ve never known. I used to return

to the perfect day we shared, and it’s faded like
a forgotten oil painting on a sunny attic wall.

I don’t understand the strange ways of love,
how its terror makes us run and hide

from what we most long for. And so you are
away now, on escape, while I sit here

with my empty Zoom screen and consider
how perilous, how exhilarating it is to fall. 

Image: Photo by Alan Tang on Unsplash