In the aftermath

Though you are gone from me

Each past love

You are paradoxically also still here with me

In the memories

And with the feelings that arise

Under the cover of silence

Of the loving and the wounding

It seemed for years my heart bled

With all the pain that could not be said

Until my head nearly burst

With the new wantings

That brought to me recognition of the pain of a past

I could never change

And if youth is wasted on the young

As the wise ones say

Then in older age perhaps

We grow wisdom from the pain

And suffer as the astrologer once said

The purification of suffering through the ordeal by fire

Desire is that fire

That burned

Fuelled by so much we could not speak of

But longed for

And wept for

Birthing deeper understandings

In the aftermath