Before Our Names Became Weather

There was a time
when morning entered barefoot,
afraid to wake the sweetness
sleeping in your face.

Your laughter moved through the rooms
like sunlight through a jar of honey;
even the weary clock
forgot its duty to the hours.

I loved the ordinary miracle of you—
the soft disorder of your waking,
the way a greeting from your lips
could make a poor day feel extravagant,
the little tendernesses you left
among the cups and folded clothes
like blossoms pressed in secret books.

If love had possessed a language then,
it would have sounded like your voice
calling from the next room;
it would have worn the warmth
of finding you still there.

How effortlessly you made the world
seem less like somewhere to endure
and more like somewhere I belonged.

And even now,
beneath the ruins of our louder years,
there lives a morning untouched by sorrow:
you, smiling;
me, believing
that the sun had risen
only to look at you.