Patchwork

I did not realize it was love.
Languid August heat in October
prolongs the blooms of spring.
I had not known anything to blossom
under swiftly darkening skies, not even
on the bluest Autumn day.
The winter rose, a myth.

I did not realize it was not love
curiously meandering through galleries.
It was not love running back the present
until our feet turned into bone
and my limbs turned into shadow.
He was not love.

My tears became dew
upon my skin. My body became an earth
for perennials; flowers grew and faded.
None would last.

The trees in the arboretum
shuttered their limbs. Damp
paths of black corduroy
partitioned decaying leaves where
tissue grew on my bones and
my limbs turned into starlight.
I did not realize you were love.