Again

Love will come again

You said

As I lay dying

With all my breath squeezed out of me

Unable to believe

That I will ever be able to stand again

And those words show me

Perhaps you never fully inhabited this place

Of utter abandonment

Where the soul’s deepest torment

Is as yet

Not even fully conscious

Because we are only at the stage of being hollowed out

Or buried alive

And sadly

There comes a time for us to be

So utterly devastated

So emptied

And so few of us understand

That this is the preparation

For a new stage of being

Whose arrival could never be glimpsed

At the outset

Of the darkest winter